Cattle Rancher And American Patriot Cliven Bundy Arrested In Portland

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American Patriot, Cattle Rancher, and inspiration for the militia liberation in Oregon Cliven Bundy was arrested in Portland after travelling from Nevada to support his sons (archived). He had travelled to Portland with his Nevada State Assembly member Michelle Fiore to seek the release of his children from Federal Prisoner of War1 camps. This round of militia liberation may be reaching its end. For 40 days and forty nights in the high desert of Oregon brave militia men and women have taken a stand supporting the Spirit of the United States Constitution and the American People against the crimes committed by the Federal Government. Since the dark day that Lavoy Finicum was slaughtered by Federal Forces and other militia leaders were captured with Ryan Bundy sustaining a gunshot wound, only four brave souls remained to continue the liberation and they have continued to maintain it under a constant state of seige. If the Oregon liberation ends today, may the American people honor the sacrifices of these brave militia souls have undertaken on their behalf.

  1. What war? The war on America's productive citizens where they are deprived of the fruits of their labor in order to better support clerks and other socialist bureaucrats.  ↩

Bitcointalk Default Trust Member Escrow.ms Arrested For Debit Card Fraud

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Pankaj 'escrow.ms' Bhardwaj was arrested by police for participating in a fraud ring that used cloned debit cards to withdraw money from other people's accounts at automated teller machines (archived). Under his forum username escrow.ms, Bhardwaj was a member of the "Default Trust" list used to seed the reputation ratings system on Theymos's Bitcointalk forum. He enjoyed a stellar reputation on that forum as evidenced by a thread on that forum discussing recent developments in the life and times of escrow.ms forum escrow, default trust member, and apparent fiat payment card cloner. Escrow.ms is not the first member of Bitcointalk's default trust list to undergo a sudden transition from trustiness to ignominy. Shortly after the creation of the default trust list, inaugural member member TradeFortress operated node.js based webwallet service Inputs.io for only a few short months before 4,100 Bitcoins disappeared from the service on November 7th, 2013.

Clapper: "Internet Of Things" Offers Tempting Surveillance Opportunities

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In testimony presented to the United States Senate, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper acknowledged that the horrifically insecure "Internet of Things" presents a target for United States surveillance operations (archived). In the same testimony Clapper noted United States activities in the United States were boosting the recruiting and resolve of organizations adversarial to the United States.

Intel Removes Skylake Feature Retroactively With Microcode Update

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In further bad news for customers of Intel's Skylake chips, PC World is reporting that Intel has is issuing a microcode update which removes a feature present at shipping which allowed safely and easily overclocking the chips by increasing their base clock frequency (archived). Normally overclocking is done safely on other chips through increasing the multiplier applied to the base clock. This is because in other chips the base clock frequency is used to derive the frequency of a number of buses on the system which can begin exhibiting aberrant behavior when the base clock frequency is molested. Skylake however divorced the base clock from other system buses which reintroduced the possibility of overclocking the chips by increasing the base clock while leaving the locked multiplier alone. Continue reading →

Dotcom Extradition Appeal Set To Begin August 29

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Denying a request by United States agents to expedite the matter, Justice Raynor Asher of the High Court in Auckland has set Kim Dotcom's appeal to begin on August 29th, 2016 (archived). Lower Court Judge Nevin Dawson ruled in favor of extraditing Dotcom in the initial hearing, but so far appellate courts have ruled more favorably for Dotcom in this case than the lower courts have.

US Department Of Education Driving Tuition Increases

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A working paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research in the United States identifies financial aid policies of the United States Department of Education as the primary driver of runaway tuition increases (archived). Rather than being driven by payroll of other costs to higher education institutions, the availability of easy federal money instead has institutions raising tuition in order to grab every cheap dollar they can. Of course this creates the substantial moral hazard wherein the easy money for institutions becomes a millstone by which fledgling Americans are chained by debt to the Federal government.

"Bitcoin Group" Fiat Mining IPO ~70% Under Goal

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Australia based Bitcoin Group, a Bitcoin mining firm based on fiat principles, raised substantially less money than their goal in an initial public offering. The firm raised $5.9 million Australian dollars out of a $20 million Australian dollar goal. Their plan if they raised the goal amount was to spend $18 million Australian dollars on Bitcoin mining equipment and facilities with the remaining $2 million to be spend on "general corporate" expenses. The firm claims to have existing mining equipment in China and Iceland. Bitcoin Group's attempts to IPO were held up several times by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission. As with many other ventures which have made the transition from Bitcoin to fiat there are outstanding concerns and rumors around the firm soliciting investment directly from Chinese Bitcoin users before initially registering as an Australian company.

Falling Aluminum Prices And Unforgiving Electricity Prices Force Noranda Aluminum Bankruptcy

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Today Noranda Aluminum, a wholly owned subsidiary of Apollo Global Management, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Contributing to the Noranda Aluminum's dire position is an inability to buy electricity for its New Madrid, Missouri smelter that justifies continued smelting at current aluminum prices. Aluminum is at present trading pennies above its 52 week low of 0.65 United States dollar per pound. Aluminum last traded consistently above 1 United States dollar per pound in 2011, then briefly traded around 1 dollar per pound around February to March of 2012, and since then aluminum prices have been locked into a clear, if fitful, downward trend.

Tribulations Of Nordic System Affecting Universities

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The declining economic fortunes of economies subscribing to the Nordic System is trickling down institutions of higher education in those countries (archived). At the end of January the University of Helsinki announced it was preparing to purge nearly 1000 positions from its payroll (archived) and now the University of Copenhagen is preparing to remove more than 500 positions from its payroll (archived). In its English language press release the University of Copenhagen notes that annual funding decreases are its normal expectation and that among other measures they plan to "makeover" their medical science programs as the equipment and laboratories they demand at present is too expensive for a proper Nordic System university to maintain.