Finance Update: Bitcoin, the War on the Poor, AstroTurf by the Rich, and More
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-03-01 13:35:30 UTC
- Modified: 2014-03-01 13:35:30 UTC
Bitcoin
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Bitcoin, the emerging if still somewhat mysterious digital currency, may be coming soon to a high-tech ATM near you.
Kiosks that allow people to buy the virtual coins, or exchange them for cash, will be installed within the next month or so in Seattle and Austin, Texas, according to Robocoin, the Las Vegas-based company that makes the machines.
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Bitcoin is big news again. The digital cryptocurrency is on the frontpage of every major newspaper. This week its price collapsed because the largest exchange on the network did not handle a known design flaw in bitcoin properly, which caused widespread disruption and possibly some loss of bitcoin. As a precaution, several exchanges had to close their virtual doors till further notice.
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Feb 28 11:27 - A class action lawsuit has been filed that sues Mark Karpeles, MtGox Inc (US), MtGox KK (JP), and Tibanne KK (JP) for pretty much all of the above.
US
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What's worth keeping an eye on is whether the Sam's Club layoffs are a symptom of much larger problems at Wal-Mart. The company has been a giant of retail for decades, but there are signs that its reign is coming to an end.
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Wal-Mart (WMT) reported today and by now, most people who follow the stock are aware of the highlights: EPS before special items, at $1.60, beat estimates by a penny; revenues fell short of estimates; same-store sales and traffic fell.
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A plan to clear homeless people from New York City subway trains in a pre-dawn Monday operation by police and transportation officials was abandoned amid pressure from campaigners.
Dozens of homeless men and women sleeping on the seats of E line trains as they rolled into the World Trade Center terminal in the early hours were left alone, despite warnings that they would be asked to leave so cars could be cleaned.
“It was postponed,” Kevin Ortiz, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, told the Guardian. “We decided not to go ahead. I can’t give you a specific reason why it was postponed. But it may well take place in the future”.
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A group of fired-up activists in Portland, Ore., who were tired of seeing homeless people being mistreated staged the kind of protest that will be difficult for the mayor to ignore.
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The instant messaging service connects millions, but its record-breaking sale won't generate new jobs
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America’s wealthy increasingly inhabit a different country from the one “they” inhabit, and America’s less fortunate seem as foreign as do the needy inhabitants of another country.
The first step in widening the sphere of “we” is to break down the barriers — not just of race, but also, increasingly, of class, and of geographical segregation by income — that are pushing “we Americans” further and further apart.
UK
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The formerly homeless are increasingly trapped in homes riddled with damp and infested with rodents after ministers gave councils powers to force those without a roof over their heads into rented accommodation rather than wait for a council house, a report by Britain's biggest housing charities has found.
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Quietly and without notice, Britain has surrendered control over its trade with Iran
Central Europe
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One of the favourite parts of my job is meeting young ICT and web entrepreneurs - who are creating new apps and services that benefit us all. Our Startup Europe programme was designed to support this group - as you can see in my earlier blog post – but it's also a way of encouraging more young people to get involved and see digital entrepreneurship as a viable career path.
AstroTurf
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Records obtained in 2011 from the office of Ohio Rep. John Adams, the ALEC public sector chair for the state, show how he worked closely with ALEC's Ohio private sector chair, Time Warner Cable lobbyist Ed Kozelek, to raise funds for the national ALEC meeting held in Cincinnati in April 2011.
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The gig is up for the everyone's favorite deficit fetishists, Simpson and Bowles. It starts great with the headline: Anti-debt group finds itself in red.
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A year and a half after launching with much fanfare, a group affiliated with fiscal watchdogs Erskine Bowles and former Sen. Alan Simpson is nearly broke.
Misc.
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The first part of this clip is about why a lot of the good jobs are gone (hint: it rhymes with whoa-balization), and the second part gets to the point about where things are made and what countries benefit. Economist Robert Reich shows us, and it's a little ... scary.
Recent Techrights' Posts
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- Any attempt to marginalise founders isn't unprecedented as a strategy
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- On DebConf and Debian 'Bedroom Nepotism' (Connected to Canonical, Red Hat, and Google)
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- These trends are worth discussing
- Canonical, Ubuntu & Debian DebConf19 Diversity Girls email
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- Links 23/04/2024: Escalations Around Poland, Microsoft Shares Dumped
- Links for the day
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- Links for the day
- Amaya Rodrigo Sastre, Holger Levsen & Debian DebConf6 fight
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- DebConf8: who slept with who? Rooming list leaked
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- Bruce Perens & Debian: swiping the Open Source trademark
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- Ean Schuessler & Debian SPI OSI trademark disputes
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- With conflict in Sudan, plus the occasional escalation/s, buying a laptop with Vista 11 isn't a high priority
- Anatomy of a Cancel Mob Campaign
- how they go about
- [Meme] The 'Cancel Culture' and Its 'Hit List'
- organisers are being contacted by the 'cancel mob'
- IRC Proceedings: Monday, April 22, 2024
- IRC logs for Monday, April 22, 2024
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- Don't trust me. Trust the voters.
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Chris Lamb & Debian demanded Ubuntu censor my blog
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- Ean Schuessler, Branden Robinson & Debian SPI accounting crisis
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- William Lee Irwin III, Michael Schultheiss & Debian, Oracle, Russian kernel scandal
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- in Vietnam Windows is at 8%, in Iraq 4.9%, Syria 3.7%, and Yemen 2.2%
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- The EPO's war on paper
- EPO: We and Microsoft Will Spy on Everything (No Physical Copies)
- The letter is dated last Thursday
- Links 22/04/2024: Windows Getting Worse, Oligarch-Owned Media Attacking Assange Again
- Links for the day
- Links 21/04/2024: LINUX Unplugged and 'Screen Time' as the New Tobacco
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 22/04/2024: Health Issues and Online Documentation
- Links for the day
- What Fake News or Botspew From Microsoft Looks Like... (Also: Techrights to Invest 500 Billion in Datacentres by 2050!)
- Sededin Dedovic (if that's a real name) does Microsoft stenography
- Stefano Maffulli's (and Microsoft's) Openwashing Slant Initiative (OSI) Report Was Finalised a Few Months Ago, Revealing Only 3% of the Money Comes From Members/People
- Microsoft's role remains prominent (for OSI to help the attack on the GPL and constantly engage in promotion of proprietary GitHub)
- [Meme] Master Engineer, But Only They Can Say It
- One can conclude that "inclusive language" is a community-hostile trolling campaign
- [Meme] It Takes Three to Grant a Monopoly, Or... Injunction Against Staff Representatives
- Quality control
- [Video] EPO's "Heart of Staff Rep" Has a Heartless New Rant
- The wordplay is just for fun
- An Unfortunate Miscalculation Of Capital
- Reprinted with permission from Andy Farnell
- [Video] Online Brigade Demands That the Person Who Started GNU/Linux is Denied Public Speaking (and Why FSF Cannot Mention His Speeches)
- So basically the attack on RMS did not stop; even when he's ill with cancer the cancel culture will try to cancel him, preventing him from talking (or be heard) about what he started in 1983
- Online Brigade Demands That the Person Who Made Nix Leaves Nix for Not Censoring People 'Enough'
- Trying to 'nix' the founder over alleged "safety" of so-called 'minorities'
- [Video] Inauthentic Sites and Our Upcoming Publications
- In the future, at least in the short term, we'll continue to highlight Debian issues
- List of Debian Suicides & Accidents
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- Jens Schmalzing & Debian: rooftop fall, inaccurately described as accident
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- [Teaser] EPO Leaks About EPO Leaks
- Yo dawg!
- On Wednesday IBM Announces 'Results' (Partial; Bad Parts Offloaded Later) and Red Hat Has Layoffs Anniversary
- There's still expectation that Red Hat will make more staff cuts
- IBM: We Are No Longer Pro-Nazi (Not Anymore)
- Historically, IBM has had a nazi problem
- Bad faith: attacking a volunteer at a time of grief, disrespect for the sanctity of human life
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Bad faith: how many Debian Developers really committed suicide?
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Sunday, April 21, 2024
- IRC logs for Sunday, April 21, 2024
- A History of Frivolous Filings and Heavy Drug Use
- So the militant was psychotic due to copious amounts of marijuana
- Bad faith: suicide, stigma and tarnishing
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- UDRP Legitimate interests: EU whistleblower directive, workplace health & safety concerns
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
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- Links for the day
- Bad faith: no communication before opening WIPO UDRP case
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Bad faith: real origins of harassment and evidence
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Links 21/04/2024: Censorship Abundant, More Decisions to Quit Social Control Media
- Links for the day
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- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
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- Two hours ago in thelayoff.com
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- articles at disguised.work aren't easy to find
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- censorship is done by the recipients of the grants
- Paul Tagliamonte & Debian Outreachy OPW dating
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- Disguised.Work unmasked, Debian-private fresh leaks
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
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- The European Patent Office (EPO) does not serve the interests of Europe
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- 9-page document that was released to staff a couple of days ago
- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, April 20, 2024
- IRC logs for Saturday, April 20, 2024
- Over at Tux Machines...
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- Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt (FUD) is the business model of "modern" media
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- and Microsoft pretends that it is speaking for Linux
- Gemini Links 21/04/2024: Minecraft Ruined
- Links for the day