So very true if you have to peg that 400mm to a specific exchange rate for another currency.
You can ascertain the value of 1 BTC in your favored currency rather easily given a choice of marketplaces. Less so with 100, or 10000+. Most market-places couldn't handle the volume without a substantial shift in price before your 400mm mark was hit for say, USD.
That said BTC seems to want to reach the type of ubiquity that allowed USD to be a universal currency of sorts during it's heyday. With means to convert in and out being varied from the strictly regulated to the strictly unregulated.
If you want to look for examples of companies in the US and elsewhere engaging in activities mentioned in this article against political dissidents, look no further than the HB Gary email leak of years back. I referenced such works here[0] after Obama's announcement of NSA 'reforms' that hinted at offloading more sensitive data to private companies.
I would like to bring the attention of people who read this article back to the tactics such as the real-time spying on Wikileaks viewers. Tactics discussed by the likes of HB Gary's Aaron Barr like going after activists by their families and careers, or the US Chamber of Commerce's interest in such work.
There is a profound amount of moral hazards here that companies are wading deep into for cash and possible immunity such as what AT&T was granted.
Do note that those emails were all talk. Other than the failed attempt to expose the "leadership" of Anonymous, none of Barr's big plans were even tried, let alone successfully carried out. His own employees (all two of them) mocked him and refused to participate. Aaron Barr was one guy, dealing with a failed marriage and a failing company, and he just lost the plot there for a bit.
Since this appears to be the basis of the notion that Palantir is a branch of the NSA: the one Palantir person known to have been involved was a 27 year old sales engineer who was subsequently terminated from the company and rehired after the legal investigation Palantir launched on itself for coming within a mile of Aaron Barr cleared him. (This is based on reporting of what happened, not any kind of firsthand knowledge about Palantir, of which I have none).
So was Decru. I suppose storage encryption is also a CIA plot. So was FireEye. I suppose killing zero-day is also a CIA plot. So was Inktomi. I suppose caching web traffic, &c &c.
I could go on, if you like. In-Q-Tel has backed a lot of stuff.
In-Q-Tel is an interesting company. They've invested in Google (OSINT), and Keyhole (GEOINT/IMINT). Google went on to acquire Keyhole, to create Google Earth [1].
Why did you make like light of Michael Hasting's death then denigrate Barrett Brown[0] after irrelevantly bringing up Monsanto and Nickelback[1] in that thread 36 days ago instead of discussing the topic (or not engaging) like a reasonable person?
You could of had the advantage of people not knowing more about this type of work enlisted by governments/carried out by for-profit concerns, instead you choose to be highly corrosive in an attempt to elicit some reaction.
But by golly here you are again doing the same. So while your attention is clearly engaged upon me, could you answer the question above?
Because Michael Hastings was killed for his unpublished work on chemtrails, not the reporting he'd done on CIA, and Barrett Brown is no hero: he's out to immanentize the eschaton! Hail Eris!
If you're going to write a conspiracy theory for us, "streetnigga", at least do it with some style. Throw an "Ewige Blumenkraft" or two in there.
I am torn between wanting to up vote this comment in honor of Wilson and other associated Popes and wanting to down vote it because it contributes nothing and distracts from the various crimes highlighted in the article.
Zero, but thanks for putting the idea in my head. :)
I have a very hard time taking people who believe in the Michael Hastings conspiracy seriously, and that's just one of the goofy conspiracy theories the parent commenter has promoted on HN.
Happy to help. This is Free Liquor Week (aka RSA), but you're probably wise enough to avoid it.
I agree the most likely situation with Hastings was he had personal issues, but maybe got spooked by someone calling him or otherwise being threatening, and crashed his car. After writing some pretty good articles. And Barrett Brown has some serious issues as well, although (like aaronsw and weev, and manning's pre-trial detention conditions) the way the legal system is being used is itself unconscionable.
I would rather eat a live wriggling cockroach than attend RSA or, for that matter, be in the same city as RSA.
I don't understand where you're even coming from regarding Hastings. He had a history of abusing drugs and alcohol. His car crashed. A bunch of Internet conspiracy theorists decided that crashed cars don't burst into flames the way video showed Hastings car had, even as other Internet people, including (here on HN) an EMT, pointed out that they actually do exactly that surprisingly often; some even presented videos. The LA Coroner released a report that pointed out Hastings had amphetamines and cannabis in his system when his car crashed.
From where, exactly, do you get the notion that he received a threatening phone call? Is there any evidence anywhere at all that that ever happened, or does it just make for a good story?
I just meant he might have been driving even worse than usual due to (founded or unfounded paranoia). Or meth. Or both.
(I recall reading somewhere that he was convinced someone was monitoring him. But I suspect occam's razor in this case was being used to cut up lines.)
I have, although not in the past ~10 years -- I think I read the Illuminatus trilogy in ~3 days at the MIT SFS library; I haven't read Schroedinger's Cat. I often get two of my favorite characters (Celine and Danneskjold) mixed up, though.
So, you've spent enough effort studying the details of the Michael Hastings case that you can actually conclude the conspiracy angle is so outlandish that it can even be used as a reliable indicator of a broken general reasoning process? That is a mighty strong claim, and I'm surprised that the quality of evidence is high enough to support it and that you were so interested in it.
I haven't, and don't really have feelings on the case either way - it seems inactionable and thus uninteresting. But it seems to me that the reasonable uninvolved opinion should be to treat views on Michael Hastings's death as unindicative of much else at all.
No it isn't, your syllogism is a straw man. Hastings died under what are commonly known as "suspicious circumstances", which you omit in your rush to denigrate. A more accurate summary:
Hastings was a journalist who had covered "national security" topics. Hastings sent the following email:
"Hey (redacted names) -- the Feds are interviewing my "close friends and associates." Perhaps if the authorities arrive "BuzzFeed GQ," er HQ, may be wise to immediately request legal counsel before any conversations or interviews about our news-gathering practices or related journalism issues.
Also: I'm onto a big story, and need to go off the rada[r] for a bit.
All the best, and hope to see you all soon.
Michael"
Hasting died 14 hours later at 4:20 AM when his speeding car veered into one of the many trees lining the road. There were no skidmarks, suggesting that the vehicle was under control. Nobody knows why he was driving at that time.
It's hardly ironclad proof of a conspiracy, but you are not contributing to the discussion.
You are the one that brought up conspiracy in reference to Hastings[0]. Stop lying as if I was the one to inject it into the topic of spying. This disinformation bull your are pulling is seriously detrimental to any possible discussion.
To everyone not tptacek: Look at my comments, none suggest Hastings died due to tptacek suggested conspiracy.
How much have you studied leprechauns? Do you feel qualified to comment on them? What would you think of me if I insisted that leprechauns were behind all the major world events of the last decade?
There are lots of things we can't prove or disprove, and it's good to acknowledge that. But that doesn't make ideas based on huge logical leaps and not much evidence reasonable. It's possible (in the sense of not impossible) that leprechauns are real and do manipulate human history, but the reasons anyone would think so right now are so paltry that even if it did somehow turn out to be the case, the people who supported the theory right now would still not seem any more credible than a broken clock.
I would honestly be interested in the first 0.5-10 minutes of your leprechaun theory (depending on beer consumption, and if I'd heard similar things before), then I would try to change the subject and hope that there was more to you. And the same would apply if you were to go on a rant about how people who take joy in the idea of leprechauns are positively stupid.
It's not that true/false are equally credible, it's that assertion of either one starts off utterly non-credible. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and all that. This applies to proving the existence of leprechauns. But it also applies to positively disproving the existence of (a specific definition of) leprechauns, especially with the goal of using that result to imply something else.
Insisting the definitiveness of either take on a middleground is akin to rooting for sports teams (not that that isn't fun, but don't think you're helping spread truth).
You are the one that brought up his death as if it was a conspiracy[0] in response to my linking[1] of one Hasting's reports on spying[2]. No one asked you to believe in a conspiracy. You deflected from the original topic of spying with it, and continue to do so by stating I was the one that promoted it.
The results seem perfectly usable to me, sorry your favorite sites are not top ranking[0]. Care to explain why you think DDG is explicitly filtering them?
It's not that they're not top ranking - they don't appear anywhere in the first few hundred results. DDG must be filtering them because those sites are at the top of yandex and DDG says it is getting the results from yandex.
As for "perfectly usable", mountaindragon (result 2) and codesinhtml.com (result 3) are atrocious. And makemyownwebpage.com (result 10 or so) looks like a homepage from the 90s.
I think the issue is that DDG is getting crappy results from yandex, then filtering out the good sites to make the results even worse. Weird :)
I don't know at all if this is true, but his argument seems to just be that DDG is pulling its results from yandex, yandex shows w3schools at the top, and DDG doesn't have it in the first few hundred results--therefore DDG is filtering or significantly reordering the yandex results.
Well for one I think without giving a hash value for the data to be downloaded, say a known good torrent, this can only result in tears for the end user. Adobe pirate releases, notorious for being infected.
But to the point of your comment I would be wary of just considering it downloading. If, again using the bittorrent file transfer idea, you download a copy you could very well be considered to be making available the intellectual property for illegal obtainment. I personally wouldn't want to be stating "support said it was OK" if my ISP or an IP protection firm's lawyers take action. Since Adobe has worked with ISPs to monitor and issue complaints I wouldn't put this out of the realm of possibility.
How can one say the editors did Levinson a favor by holding back the story? Is propagating the idea that Iran or other nation has some innocent civilian when he is really CIA beneficial? Wouldn't that just solidify a potential negative reaction from said government who is apparently rightfully holding a foreign agent who was working on their soil?
In the end your comment seems to support the parent. NYTimes sits on stories at the behest of the US government, only releases it when another agency beats them to the punch.
Yachts are also good for committing manslaughter[0]. This is coming from the wealthy man who thinks focus on the wealthy means a Kristallnacht.
"Writing from the epicenter of progressive thought, San Francisco, I would call attention to the parallels of fascist Nazi Germany to its war on its 'one percent,' namely its Jews, to the progressive war on the American one percent, namely the "rich," Perkins, a founding member of the venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caulfield and Byers, wrote in a letter to the editor in The Wall Street Journal on Friday.
He didn't say that yachts are good for manslaughter or that manslaughter is good.
I don't want to debate politics with you because you don't come off as seeking a rational open-minded discussion.
I'm commenting primarily to make it clear that I do not agree with you. I didn't want to leave that ambiguous since both your and my comments about the rich were primarily negative in this thread.
If the topic is use of wealth, 'social signals' then monies spent on Yacht races by owners like the one linked is applicable. I do not think there could be a bigger waste of resources than 'social signalling' by the wealthy with Yacht based fundraisers.
Essentially I would go the more direct route, not with events that allow you to use your toys. Not sure where you getting signals of irrationality or lack of open minded discussion. Is it because the word Yacht brings up images of extreme waste instead of philanthropy, resulting in me linking to the likes of Mr Kristallnacht? How well is that social signalling going if this happens to people?
Citation would be needed since I've never seen court insist that the ability to feel sorry (or just saying it to placate others) means guilt for an accused act.
Edit: Wouldn't that be something though? It would enable someone to argue innocence due to lying wholesale to someone's face saying you were sorry.
Sure you'd have to admit to being a liar in court but whatever. After winning slam dunk since this venue is apparently void of evidence, say sorry to the court for the problems (leave the judge wondering) and call it a day.
edit: To those polling in at over 1000, yikes. Hopefully you 13 (so far) are joking around. Business or personal? Any insurance?