According to French police during a raid where they killed the alleged coordinator of last Friday's mass shooting in Paris, a phone was found with plaintext SMS messages used in coordinating the event (archived). The Paris mass shooting different from those in the United States where such events occur with greater frequency in that the the French attack utilized a group of allegedly 8 shooters while such events in the United States more typically involve shooters working as individuals or pairs. French President Hollande has responded to the mass shooting with a declaration of emergency and the suspension of numerous civil rights for French citizens. Hollande has issued statement to the effect of assuring all French citizens regardless of their religious or ethnic background that their civil rights have been suspended equally.
Category Archives: People
Larcenous Winkelvii Exchange Hits $2200/BTC, Recants
Shortly before Qntra experience significant downtime this week due to a hardware failure, the Gemini "exchange" reversed a trade that had on Friday November 13th taken the traded price of Bitcoin on that exchange to 2200 United States dollars per Bitcoin. Gemini's "account review team" along with their "executive management" by their own reports conspired to brand the trades a "customer error" and reversed the trades leaving some other parties to these trades with zero or negative balances as they had continued trading after the earlier trade. Winkelvii apologists are blaming fiat market "obvious error rules" for the reversal, though the volume of the trades that took Gemini out of concordance and to 2200 United States Dollars was only 80 Bitcoins suggesting a critically thin order book which makes all attempts at actually trading on that exchange the result of erroneous judgement.
"Core" Bitcoin Client to Drop Transaction Priority
According to a mailing list post by Matt Corallo plans are in the works to drop transaction priority relay and mining code from the Bitcoin client "Core" in its 0.12 release (archived). "Core" is the Bitcoin Client whose development was formerly supported and directed by the Vessenes' Foundation, in contrast to the bitcoind client 'therealbitcoin' maintained by the Bitcoin Foundation. Earlier this week the developers of the "Core" client released a version 11.2 which introduces soft forking code to implement a time locking feature referred to as "Check Lock Time Verify" and designated BIP 65. This summer a soft forking change designated BIP 66 lead to several chain splits and reorganizations when it was triggered.
Yik Yak Use Leads To Arrest
A teenager studying computer engineering at the Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla was reportedly arrested at his residence hall and rendered under the cover of darkness to the Boone County Jail in Columbia, Missouri. The teenage student is alleged to have posted text to the so called anonymous local message board app "Yik Yak" which the police are alleging was a "criminal terroristic threat" (archived). In a blog post today operators of the "Yik Yak" platform confirmed that they cooperate with law enforcement agencies and share information. It appears the civil unrest in Columbia, Missouri and at the Mizzou campus is continuing to escalate in spite of Monday's resignation of President Tim Wolfe. Numerous examples of conflict between students and faculty trying to continue the academic business of the university are emerging in local media, including that of professor of nutrition Dr. Dale Brigham whose attempt to resign his position after student uproar over his decision to dare holding class and an exam on Wednesday is not being recognized by the University (archived). Continue reading
Wolfe Resigns At Mizzou Surrendering To Pressure
Tim Wolfe, president of the University of Missouri System, tendered his resignation at an emergency board of curators meeting. The football team is anticipated to resume organized team activities and compete in a game against Brigham Young University on Saturday.
The Most Serene Republic Celebrates First Birthday
Citizens of The Most Serene Republic of Bitcoin are celebrating the first anniversary of the unveiling and signing of Bitcoin's Declaration of Independence.
ProtonMail Confirms Ongoing Profitability of Negotiations (For The Terrorists)
As reported by ProtonMail itself (archived), the Swiss security theatricians have followed FBI-recommended best practice and caved to the demands of terrorists: Continue reading
Theymos Threatens Coinbase's Social Media Privileges
Brian Armstrong, CEO of the YCombinator incubated startup Coinbase has been vocal in supporting BIP-101. He claims Coinbase will begin using full nodes with BIP-101 code patched in sometime in December if no other proposal reaches "consensus". Theymos who moderates the Bitcoin subreddit and Bitcointalk, threatened to ban Coinbase representatives if they were to begin promoting software that implemented BIP-101 to the public before a consensus is reached.
Man Convicted as Serial Killer Over Circumstantial Evidence
Charles Severance was convicted of three murders involving prominent Alexandria, Virginia residents which occurred over more than a decade in spite of the entirely circumstantial nature of the evidence against him and the existence of credible alternative suspects (archived, archived). The first murder to occur for which Severance has been convicted was that of Nancy Dunning, a real estate agent and wife of James Dunning, a former Alexandria sheriff. Her husband the former sheriff was a suspect for a long time though he was never charged in a crime.
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Fox Lake "Hero" Officer Accused of Suicide and Embezzlement
Fox Lake Police Lieutenant Charles Joseph Gliniewicz whose death in September ignited a manhunt for his alleged yet unidentified killers has now had his cause of death redetermined to be a suicide (archived). Gliniewicz's motive for commiting this killing is alleged to stem from fear that his theft of equipment and funds would be discovered. Living police officials allege that among other actions Gliniewicz stole money from the department's "Police Explorer" youth program, which Lieutenant Gliniewicz directed and mentored and used the money for his own purposes (archived). Qntra can not determine the veracity of these allegations though an unsolvable killing of an officer would create opportunity for surviving members of the department to commit their own improprieties and hang the blame on the deceased. If this is indeed a suicide Lieutenant Gliniewicz would not be the only Illinois police officer to kill himself while on duty in the month of September 2015. Caseyville, Illinois Police Sergeant and one time interim chief of that department Scott Miller shot himself in his squad car with his department issued firearm (archived) after 21 years working in that department though no criminal acts were attributed to him posthumously yet.