Lessons from the MTGOX fiasco

Bitcoin Magazine (Photo credit: zcopley)

As we've all heard, MTGOX has gone under. Now I'm sure we've all heard this because it's all over the mainstream news. It's everywhere. It's a scandal. Ergo, it's newsworthy and deserves to be reported on. They don't understand what is it they're reporting on but they said it anyway. Which questions the quality of news you actually get from mainstream news..
But back to MTGOX. Some say it's a tragedy, some say it was timebomb that finally went off. All we can do is learn from it. And here are the top 5 things to learn from the demise of MTGOX.

1. If you believe in BITCOIN, so will others. So much so, they'll steal it from you. Money isn't evil, it just drives people into doing evil things. So virtual money will drive people to do evil virtually.
2. You need better security to protect bitcoin transactions, better than those used to protect trading card swaps. Apparently Magic just won't cut it
3. Like in the real world, don't expect other virtual banks to bail your virtual bank out of trouble. It's the government's job apparently and they're still trying to get the spelling of bit-coin right. With dash or without.. And like the real world, the other virtual banks have thrown MTGOX under the bus, claiming that it was 'rogue'.
4. The bitcoins that were stolen were not lost, like the mainstream news reported. The total amount of bitcoins that were stolen were about 7% of all bitcoins in the world. Why would anyone steal all those bitcoins and not spend it later. Unless the point was to destroy Bitcoin's reputation. Who would want to do that? After all that time and effort to hack MtGOX? .. except someone who feels threaten by it.. perhaps...er.. forget about what I said. Is that a drone humming above?
5. . ... and finally, if you're gonna steal virtual currency from va irtual bank, steal everything. Everyone will be so upset with the bank, they'll stop looking for you. Really, how many people have you heard talking about getting the guys who did this? Why not go after the people who did this? Unless.. that drone is getting closer isn't it.

Release the virtual friar in you

You don't need to scale these Vatican walls
to get to the manuscripts (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Are you someone who wishes to be religious, old-school style? Do you harbor ambitions of going back to ye olden times and copying out your own religious manuscript?  Or an ex-monk driving in a Ferrari but longing for your previous vocation?
Well fret not dear sir. Get yourself on the Internet and trek virtually to the Vatican. The Vatican has released ancient manuscripts on-line for the public to view. They have also made it okay for Dan Brown followers to peruse and pursue their own conspiracy ideas.

What is interesting is not only what the manuscripts say but what is on it. Apparently, the monks wrote in the margins. More like doodled. I hope someone OCRs the manuscripts and put them through Google Translate, twice. That should be hilarious. Everything is hilarious after Google Translate gets hold if it twice. Try it. Take any article, translate it to another language and another language. Now translate it back.

Speaking of Dan Brown, shouldn't he be writing about Tom Hanks discovering some doodle in the margin of Vatican manuscripts on a tablet proving the existence of a conspiracy to hold back Armageddon?

Amazon also wants drones to drop your packages

Will the drones be able to carry an Amazon Kindle? (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I think you've heard about it by now. And now, everyone is talking about drones bringing you stuff you bought on-line. While FedEx was thinking about it in the past and a couple of Aussies decided to carry around the heaviest object known to a package, Amazon is stealing their thunder by going on 60 Minutes and announcing that they want to do the same.
If you live within some distance from an Amazon delivery center, Amazon wants to delivery your (light) stuff in about 30 minutes. That right. Amazon wants you to get your DVDs as soon as you get your pizza. Except it won't be a pimpled-faced kid at your door. It's the flying terminator. Because there will be no one piloting it. It'll use satellite and GPS to fly to your house.
Again, there is nothing wrong with this picture at all. All those drones flying around, missing all sorts of poles, wires and trees. All the while holding on to a dangling package. Totally safe.
I heard there is a sale on helmets at Amazon.

Artificial Wombs and Robots: Living Like a Battery

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Is there no end to scientists taking movie ideas and trying to make them real? I'm okay with cell-phones, personal communicators and eventually, transporters. But really? An artificial womb?
Researchers at a private university in Japan are on their way to making the first artificial womb. It's a goat for now but that womb is big enough to keep anti-abortionists happy. Right now, they're not successful. The fetus can stay inside only for some time. The problem is feeding the fetus. Solve that and we might as well be selling pods and sell ourselves as batteries.
Which is something people would like to do anyway. It's a step above Couch Potato. At least your staying still and making money as a battery. The 3D world you live in is probably better than the one you are in anyway.
At the pace we're improving drones / robot / terminators, we well on our way. Why can't they look at movies and find ways that won't lead to end of humankind.

http://consciousnewsmedia.blogspot.ro/2013/11/the-artificial-womb-is-born-and-world.html?m=1#.UoM-cOzn670

Watch out for drones bearing books in Australia

An Australian company is trying to deliver books with drones. That's right, drones.

Here your 50 Shades of Boom

Why wait for tomorrow for that book you ordered when you can get it right now. Two Australian companies are working together to make this happen. Since there is more than one person involved, it's safe to assume it's okay. I mean how crazy can two aussies be?
I know it's hard to compete with Amazon but do we have to resort to armaments?
And I get that some of us can't understand a Kindle. Or that reading from a screen is not the only same as reading from a piece of dead tree. Or that you're afraid of dropping it in a toilet. But really, does your need to read exceed the fear of something with 4 spinning blades showing up to your house or front door. Maybe you shouldn't fear the blades of the drone as much as you should a hardcover falling on your head. Or maybe that's the thing we need to make children read more, the fear of drones showing up with more books.
Can you imagine the swarm of drones flying around the next Harry Potter or Twilight book comes out?

Drone me Facebook

Facebook is trying to buy social mapping app Waze for about a billion dollars. Great. Just when you found a awesome GPS direction finder, traffic avoidance system, it's gets bought by the people who are in the business of selling information about you. You don't want the whole world to know where you are right now. You don't even want them to know where you were last night.

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It's all a conspiracy, you know. The State Department is just outsourcing more and more stuff. Ever since their failed campaign to get Hamas to check-in their meetings on FourSquare, they are looking for legal ways to find people and sick the drone on them. With Facebook buying Waze, all they have to do is like a few facebook pages and follow a couple of squinty eyed looking guys on the Internet and Facebook will do the rest. Or they could spend a few bucks buying the information. How? Because Facebook is probably selling them.
Imagine the done is already on the way and the Paypal payment is taking forever to send the money to Facebook.
I give up. Don't Like my page. Drone it.

Google's bought Waze. Probably tired of people driving in the wrong directions using Maps.

It's a Minority Report world

Eye (Photo credit: Gafoto)

Have you heard this? Now we can all live out Tom Cruise's nightmare. Well, not his real nightmare. One where he has in a movie. No, not waking up to Cameron Diaz next to him in bed. Not that movie. Ok, it may not have been his. It could have been Steven Spielberg's, though.
What I am talking about is the scene from Minority Report where Tom has to undergo eye surgery in the same way you get your kidney removed after passing out in a hotel room. When he wakes up, he goes around and all these billboards recognize him, well his eyes really, as an old chinese man. Wrong race, right height and complexion, though. The movie was set in the near future and guess what, the future is here.
This article from the Verge says that the age of where stores can recognize us is not far away. A company from New York, can now figure out what gender you are and how old you are just from a webcam. What you do is point from a webcam out from your store window and the software will tell you who has been watching your store window. It can be accurate up to 90% of the time, telling you whether it was a guy or a gal and whether they are young enough to be your customers.
This has store owners excited. They can greet their shoppers any time of the day. Imagine the day when the store window greets you young ladies "hi there mister" just because you forgot to shave some facial hair. Or wrap a shawl too close to your chin.. to hide the facial hair.
Or when the camera notices the diamond earrings and immediately adds 30% to the price on the LED display.
This can also backfire. Imagine the robotic store window calling the cops just because it's decided you're looking at the merchandise in the window the 'wrong' way.
Ah well.

The next step towards our very first Terminator Skynet Hunter Killer Flying copter

I don't why it creeps me out. But it creeps me out when I see people ignoring the lessons that movies are trying to teach us. Especially movies that are trilogies.
Take this sefl-flying copter thing. The autonomous copters with for rotors. You know, the ones FedEx is thinking of using to send our packages. We already saw them being able to fly around objects on their own. They can talk to each other to fly in a formation. I thought that was creepy. I thought that the guys who do this would go, "Yeah, good job done. Let's go out tonight."
But no. Someone else thought, 'why not take it to the next level'.
Why? Why do you want to take it to the next level? Have you seen what the final level looks like? Hint: It's an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. He did three of them and then asked Batman to do the last one.  And the guy who was in those greek god movies. Not Charlton Heston.
In this clip you'll see these copters throw a ball and catch it. Is that really necessary? Are you really that desperate to catch a foul ball?

Then they made it so that it can learn from it's mistakes. Why did you do that? Why? Now it's going to start learning where to throw that ball. Sure, it's a ball today. Soon, it'll lob a grenade. Then it's going to learn that it doesn't need us. Then we're going to be batteries.
Or is that another movie?

The bullets are in the mail

First of all, my condolences to the family and victims of the Batman movie shooting in Colorado. I deeply sympathize with what they are going through.
But I have to say something about the killer. No, not alleged. We are definitely passed that. We passed that the moment the police had to send in the bomb squad to remove the booby traps in his apartment. What I can't get out of my head is that he got loads of ammunition over the Internet and had them mailed to him.
What a crazy world we live in when we can get bullets delivered to us. It used to be a thing that you could threaten someone by sending them a bullet in an envelope. This guy asked for them in the dozens.
And in the mail, for pete's sake. You can't even send liquids in the mail for fear they might leak. You can't even dab a bit of talcum powder to make that romantic birthday card smell sweeter without Homeland Security kicking down the door. And this guy got bullets send to him. Which is more dangerous or suspect? The so-called solutions looking for a problem?

FedEx wants use flying drones. What could go wrong?

Have your heard that FedEx want to use flying drones in the US? Apparently they want to use it to send packages. What next? UPS to use drones to do door to door delivery ? What are they going to do? Drop packages from the sky to each house? Should we have to be worried being bonked by dropping packages soon?
You know, they are going to have driver-less cars soon. But it'll probably start with trucks. So you can imagine a driver-less UPS truck pull up, opens it's hatch and out comes this hovering flying drone with your package. No harm there. There hasn't been any warning whatsoever about robots taking over the world. It's a novel idea. Nobody has thought about it. So it's probably safe.
You know what will happen? The drones will just hover over the to neighbor's house and ask them to sign for your package.  I'm sure they will be willing to do anything to get a flying drone with 4 spinning rotor blades off their doorstep.
Update: Apparently, Amazon is thinking the same.

Dead but not down: Tech bringing back the dead to perform again

There is a growing concern about the technology that brought back Tupac to the stage at a concert recently. No, Tupac didn't rise from the dead, although there are many reasons he would do so if he could. This was a computer generated Tupac. Yes, it is the descendant of the T-Rex from Jurassic Park ...but with more bite.
This is disturbing because of two things. First, now that we can have live action holograms, it won't be long before it moves from the stage to the big screen. I mean movies. Hologram actors acting with live ones. It's a director's wet dream. Producers are outright in delirium. Imagine bringing back Cary Grant to act with ... Justin Beiber. Second, since actors can continue to act even after they are dead, we might as well etch the Oscar for best Actress with Meryl Streep's name.

Welcome overlords

Have you hear this? Apes hugging and congratualting each other after being released from a Vienna lab.

after 30 years.
Crap there goes the planet.
People, how many plaent of the apes movies do we need to make before you understand. It's clear from the pictures that they were plotting our downfall.
I will call Mark Whalberg. And then you'll be sorry.

In all seriousness, cruelty to animals is a bad thing. If you don't think so, if you like being cruel to animals, there is a place that you can go to and register.
"Hi, I am a future serial killer, officer. Please lock me up now."