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
-
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.
-
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.
-
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
-
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.
-
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.
-
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”.
-
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.
-
The instant messaging service connects millions, but its record-breaking sale won't generate new jobs
-
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
-
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.
-
Quietly and without notice, Britain has surrendered control over its trade with Iran
Central Europe
-
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
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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
- Protecting People From So-called 'Social Media' is Not Censorship (No More Than Banning or Restricting Access to Cigarettes is 'Censorship')
- it's not censorship when the thing you are censoring [sic] is itself a censorship powerhouse operated by a foreign and hostile nation (or oligarchs of Musk's nature)
- [Meme] Solving Real Problems With So-called 'Social Media'?
- Feeding and medically treating animals helps, unlike "likes"
- EPO is Corrupt Like Always, What Changed is the Lack of Media Coverage (No Transparency Means No Democracy)
- We need to revive online media and encourage dissent
- [Meme] How NOT to Do Activism Online
- So many self-professed liberals continue participating and driving traffic (ads) in X
- Number of Libera.Chat Users (Simultaneously Online) Falls to Lowest Figure in Over 3 Years
- Notice the downward trend/curve in recent months
- Shedding Light on How the EPO Sheds Off Staff in Order to Grant Loads of Invalid (Fake) Patents in Europe
- The people who decide on these policies lack a background in science
-
- Links 11/12/2024: More Google Layoffs Rumoured for January, 'Linux' Foundation Colonises India
- Links for the day
- Mozilla's Firefox is Floundering, in the United Kingdom Its Share Fell to 2% This Month
- HTTPS is becoming little but a transport layer for Chrome-like browsers, i.e. proprietary things with DRM and perhaps attestation (which means you cannot modify them; you'd get blocked for trying)
- Links 11/12/2024: Climate Warming, 'People Can Fly' Layoffs
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 11/12/2024: LLMs as Plagiarism, Advent of Code 2024 Momentum
- Links for the day
- In United Arab Emirates (UAE), Microsoft Now on One in 8 Internet-Connected Devices?
- Web-connected clients are becoming scarce that run Microsoft operating systems (Windows)
- IBM and Microsoft Hats at Linux Foundation
- "Fedora Project Leader Matthew Miller: A change of hats!"
- IBM's Latest Fedora Divestment Speaks for Itself
- Microsoft must be very pleased with what IBM is doing
- Why is UK Press Gazette Jingoistic About Plagiarists and LLM Slop Disguised as Journalism?
- Press Gazette appears to be participating in the attack on honest journalism
- In Central Africa, Which is Bigger Than Europe, Windows is About 5% in Terms of "Market Share"
- they apparently got so fed up with colonialism
- Communicating Outside of Skinnerboxes and Social Control Media
- Tackling collective isolation and miscommunication (or communications being controlled by middlemen)
- [Meme] Social Control Media is NOT Free Speech
- It's time to discard that stupid argument that banning an abusive censor is "censorship"
- Banning Not Only TikTok... if Not for FOMOC (Fear of Missing on Constituents)
- It's a sort of addiction by peer pressure
- Montenegro's Share of GNU/Linux Reaches All-Time High
- We don't really know why, but that's just what the data from statCounter suggests
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, December 10, 2024
- IRC logs for Tuesday, December 10, 2024
- Yes, Of Course the Linux Foundation's OpenSSF Rejects Open Source and GNU/Linux (New Report)
- longstanding tradition
- Links 10/12/2024: Nvidia's Regulatory Woes, Trust Issues in LLMs (and Similar Recent Hype)
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 10/12/2024: Lagrange 1.18.4 Released, New RNG
- Links for the day
- More Chatbot 'Articles' About Chatbots
- Look what's happening to the Web...
- Microsoft Falls to All-Time Lows in Cameroon
- Windows down to just 4.6%
- Brittany Day Still Uses Bots to 'Write' Articles (But Not All the Time)
- it leads to a presumption of plagiarism
- Links 10/12/2024: Trying "Hey Hi" With New Hype and Buzzwords, TikTok Bans Imminent
- Links for the day
- Google's CEO: LLMs' ‘Low-Hanging Fruit’ Now Exhausted
- They basically tell shareholders not to expect returns on this hype
- Microsoft Windows Falls to 11% in Senegal, an All-Time Low
- In neighbouring countries (to the east of Senegal) the "market share" of Windows is even lower
- The EPO's Corrupt Dealings With Microsoft Never Addressed, Only Worsened
- it helps Microsoft spy on the competition and manipulate examiners dealing with its files
- The Catching of Luigi Mangione Shows We Need Not Have More Surveillance (Than We Already Have; It's Excessive Anyway)
- instead of saying surveillance is insufficient and thus we need more of it, now they can claim they have enough of it
- [Teaser] Fate of Formalities Officers (FOs) at the EPO
- Coming soon
- Libre Liberia: Windows Down to 8% in Liberia
- In Liberia, only about 1 in 12 Web requests seems to originate from Windows
- Links 10/12/2024: Health, Politics, Economics, and More
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 10/12/2024: LLM Plagiarism and "Flow" Review
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Monday, December 09, 2024
- IRC logs for Monday, December 09, 2024
- EPO Salaries Reduced: EPO's “Sustainability” Clause "Cuts the Average Overall Adjustment for Staff by –41,8%."
- What does this all mean for staff?
- Google is Nuking Remaining Invidious Instances Again, Hoping to Force Everyone to Use Proprietary Spyware With DRM
- This issue started a few hours ago
- Microsoft's Grip on Armenia is Slipping, According to New Data From statCounter
- Notice what happened to Windows - an all-time low
- [Meme] Sloppy Plagiarism Full of Errors, Lacking Actual Comprehension
- LLMs are not "AI"
- More LLM Spam/Slop About LLM Spam/Slop
- This is what the Web will become unless we expose those who contribute to the problem
- Reforming Versus Rebooting Versus Destroying Institutions
- At the moment we strive to expose the truth or shine light on pertinent facts
- Expose Corrupt Insurance Companies, Don't Kill People
- Murder gives them sympathy, makes the raiders seem like the victims
- Microsoft's Windows is Pretty Much Dead in Haiti
- Android has eaten Microsoft's lunch, Microsoft can't even eat crow
- [Teaser] EPO Management Thinks Inflation in Europe is 0.2% Per Annum
- Taming inflation by entirely ignoring it is like wrongly assuming that climate change (caused by human activity) can be overcome by not studying the effect of 8+ billion humans on this finite planet
- Corporate Media Will Be Discarded and Eventually Die If It Keeps Doing "Bill Gates Sez" (or Similar) Pieces Instead of Journalism
- "Superintelligence" does not even mean anything!
- This Week We Focus Again on European Patent Office (EPO) Scandals
- Nothing can stop us, not even a party or SLAPP
- Links 09/12/2024: Health Care Anger and Power Vacuum in Syria
- Links for the day
- Links 09/12/2024: Burned, Uncertain Future, and Failure
- Links for the day
- [Meme] Write Code, Not Social Control Media
- don't forget to 'like'
- Links 09/12/2024: UnitedHealthcare C.E.O.'s Killer Still Unknown, Syrian Regime Change Completed
- Links for the day
- Site in Support of Richard Stallman Reminds People of the FSF's and Stallman's Support of Women
- new updates
- Microsoft: Target the Young (Get 'Em While They're Young)
- Then they say Free software advocates are "extremists" and "rude"...
- As of December 8th (23 Days Remaining), the FSF (Free Software Foundation, Inc.) Already a Third of the Way Toward Ambitious Funding Goal
- FSF's memberships (or donations) drive is going a lot better than we anticipated
- Why Mike Magee Created and Was Involved in So Many News Sites About Technology
- British legend
- In Memory of Mike Magee (1949-2024) and Our Best Wishes to The Register, Which He Founded in the 1990s
- Months have passed since Magee died
- Tunisia is Android, Windows is Waning There
- Windows was measured below 20% in Tunisia
- [Meme] Jeff Bezos Working From Home
- "B**** please, publish articles in Washington Post about how working from home sucks"
- 'Remote' (From Home) Tech Workers Are More Productive for a Lot of Reasons
- The Bezos-owned media should disclose its conflict of interest here
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Sunday, December 08, 2024
- IRC logs for Sunday, December 08, 2024
- No Wonder Microsoft's LinkedIn and Github Have So Many Layoffs, Permanent Office Closures
- Traffic down, losses, probably never going to profit