Micon Gets Probation and $25,000 Fine

Reports are surfacing that Brian Micon who plead guilty to operating an unlicensed gambling site in June has been sentenced to two years of probation and a 25,000 United States dollar fine. The fine was negotiated earlier along forfeitures of computing equipment, 900 United States dollars, and 3.0996 Bitcoins. The only item to be determined during the sentencing was the length of his probation.

Bull Farmer Killed in Shootout While Protecting Life

Jack Yantis of Council, Idaho was killed by sheriff's deputies while defending one of his bulls from execution by those same sheriffs. The bull had been mauled earlier by a Subaru station wagon. The injured, disoriented, and likely concussed bull sought the attention of emergency responders who instead focused their efforts on the protected occupants of the Subaru which had attacked him. In Idaho livestock including bulls have the right of way on all roadways inside the state, and the Subaru occupants under the law had liability for the cost of treating the bull's injuries. By the time Yantis arrived to tend to his wounded bull, sheriff's deputies had made the decision to kill it for their convenience. The Associated Press reports that the official story from the Idaho State Police is that Yantis and both deputies all discharged their weapons even though Yantis was the only person struck down by gunfire (archived). No information has yet been made public on the value derived from the bull's use as a stud nor on the market value of the bull. Mr. Yantis was murdered in the defense of his property and his livelihood.

Busybox Drops systemd Support

In a commit dated October 22nd, BusyBox maintainer Denys Vlasenko announced the removal of systemd support from the minimalist unix toolkit (archived). Vlasenko offered as a comment on the commit:

systemd people are not willing to play nice with the rest of the world. Therefore there is no reason for the rest of the world to cooperate with them.

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Judge Orders Dotcom Begin Extradition Defense Monday

Judge Nevin Dawson has issued a ruling that he would refuse to hear the full arguments behind Kim Dotcom's application to have his extradition hearing stopped (archived). As a result his defense is compelled to begin presenting Dotcom's defense against the United States Government's extradition desires presented through the Crown Prosecutor on Monday.

Google Fiber Dissapoints First City to Host Service

The Kansas City Star reports that Google Fiber has severely disappointed Kansas City, home of the first Google Fiber installation (archived). This outage lead to Kansas City customers of Google Fiber missing the first inning and a half of their Royals playing in the World Series. The outage included the rare inside the park home run by Alcides Escobar on the first pitch of the game. Service was reportedly restored for most customers by 7:35, though some customers were still afflicted by the outage much later. Google representative Kelly Carnago said “We’re sorry for the inconvenience” and offered customers a two day service credit for depriving Kansas City of the least depressing thing happening there. Bitcoin mining "vendor" Butterfly Labs is/was located in a suburb of Kansas City.

Interview with David Francois on Building a Real Bitcoin Business

Operating a Bitcoin business is difficult and, a lot of times is the first step down the road which brings pretty much 9x% to crime within six months to a year (archived). With the excess influx of Venture Capital into companies pretending as to have any involvement with Bitcoin, I sat down with David "davout" Francois CTO of Paymium, formerly known as Bitcoin-Central, to talk about the fundamentals from his personal experience in developing a Bitcoin company that can survive the ruthless climate of the world of Bitcoin. Continue reading

Karpeles Arrested on Still More Embezzlement Charges

Shingetsu News Agency is reporting on their Twitter feed that Mt Gox CEO Mark Karpelès has been rearrested in Japan on still more embezzlement charges. Japanese police are only allowed to hold a suspect in detention for a limited period of time, so re-arrest on further charges is a common tactic used to keep charged suspects detained indefinitely before trial.

IRS Declares Cryptome Charity 2 Days After Key Revocation

On Cryptome's front page, the top is occupied by an announcement that they received a letter from the IRS dated September 17th granting them status as a 501(c)(3) charity whose donations are now tax deductible (archived). The date on the letter is only 2 days after the announcement of the revocation of then current Cryptome PGP keys. It is unknown if the events are connected, though the timing raises suspicions.

FBI Agent Encourages Paying Ransomware Demands

The Security Ledger report at a summit the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s CYBER and Counterintelligence Program at the Boston field office, Joseph Bonavolonta, encourages paying ransomware demands (archived). The quality of the encryption implementations utilized in ransomware is frequently too high for his office to do anything to recover the affected files. As a prophylactic measure he encouraged healthy backup measures so systems could at least be restored to a pre-ransomware state.