qwertzlcoatl

The article states that Branson has (probably) a bunch of Bitcoin:

> Branson—an early bitcoin investor himself

Can somebody with some knowledge about the chinese bank and regulatory system tell me if Bitcoin presents an attractive opportunity for chinese people to buy foreign currency like the Euro and Dollar easily?

> I'm also not so sure whether a fingerprint can't still be easily faked

How to fake fingerprints from ChaosComputerClub: http://dasalte.ccc.de/biometrie/fingerabdruck_kopieren?langu...

Depends on which modern day activities you are comparing those with.

Here you can find the classified slides in full : http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/national/nsa-report-on...

Wow, there really doesn't seem to be anything off-limits for this dude.

Even traditional ponzi schemes:

> He set up a network of interlinked companies, including Trendax which was claimed to be an artificial intelligence-driven hedge fund delivering an annual return of at least 25%

I always assumed the entire point of online wallets would be the ability to do off-chain transaction clearing.

I am so overflowing and stuffed from all these NSA revelations, that I read "Snowden Runs Out Of Garbage" two times in a row.

I remember the Netherlands had so few criminals that it had to shut down several prisons and lay off hundreds of staff members and started importing criminals from other countries like Belgium on a contract basis because of the lack of people to incarcerate. [1]

This is the country where you could just drive into its capital and buy every strain of cannabis you can possibly imagine and different strains of psilocybin magic mushrooms without so much as a howdy and an ID if you looked younger than 18.

[1] http://vorige.nrc.nl/international/article2246821.ece/Nether...

I assume you never went to a apple conference.

> I was also looking for another unique ID that users are identified by

They can use plugins / extensions installed. Fonts installed. If cookies are enabled or not, etc. Check out: https://panopticlick.eff.org/

Livestream to senate hearings covering all this can be found here: http://www.judiciary.senate.gov/hearings/hearing.cfm?id=0d93...

As of this moment it's all about FISA. Wonder if this new allegation will be talked about.

I think I have what you were really looking for: http://www.reddit.com/r/tabled/comments/1j1gbv/table_iama_hi...

Check out /r/tabled and /u/tabledresser - a bot that condenses the threads from /r/IAMA and /r/AskScience into easy to consume tables.

With the weight of the name ubuntu, I wonder why they outsourced their crowdfunding to an foreign entity. They could easily have razzed up something on their own.

I live in Heidelberg, Germany and I can't even fathom how many people here would be intrigued by watsi. I just found out about it and am blown away by how effective a simple idea can be executed.

You guys should get a grip in europe. Are you planning on making regular bank transactions possible in europe? For traditionally-minded people who'd like to donate.

Collapsible comments are my top priority for a hacker news extension. It looks really neat though.

Same here. There are quite some extension I find attractive but can't use because I remain celibate to Firefox.

The "Code of Silence" isn't only efficient in the Mafia.

I hope it doesn't come with the privacy intrusion of a Jay-Z.

A lot of former employees have been relocated to bases in Wiesbaden and Kaiserslautern, but you're right that there will be an economic downturn, a drop in petrol & energy consumption etc.

On the other hand, something very positive is that the 2.500 abandoned apartments will make some space in the horrendous housing shortage in Heidelberg. The regional authorities said it's short of 8000+ apartments to fulfill the needs of thousands of commuters and students. So this is seen as a relieve.

The 213 hectars open area can also be used for sport facilities, agricultural utilization, public green space or rooms for the "creative economy" as germans say.

Heidelberg is very stable economically speaking and will not struggle from the troops leaving in 2014. Excluding any friendships and romantic liaisons that might end, this is generally seen as positive by germans. My guess would be that the service members are also glad to be returning home.

For reference, a picture of the currently occupied space by the US in Heidelberg : http://i.imgur.com/TsZuTC8.jpg

The Heidelberger mayor Eckart Würzner said he felt very sad about the departure of the US Army:

“After World War II no-one in Heidelberg knew the way into the future. The US Army worked to educate the young generation about how democracy works. It gave Heidelberg a perspective and helped the city get back on its feet and on its way to democracy,” he said.

Maybe they want to own a building for each one of their childrens children.

And Butterfly Labs still hasn't shipped their orders from Day 1. There will be an awful lot of people who will never see a return on their investment from this venture.

There is a conspiracy theory going around regarding this issue being orchestrated collectively by the ESEA admins. This theory comes from several really weird statements from ESEA admin ipkane, made months before the Bitcoin mining was implemented.

The ability of the US government to bend other governments in a certain direction, is like a leak in and of itself, as I surely did not expect so many governments, including mine in germany, to be this intimidated by the US powerhouse.

I was interested in a source for these numbers and I might just post them here for anyone wondering :

Percentage of lawyers: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/files/2013/01/Co...

Percentage of millionaires: http://www.politifact.com/georgia/statements/2013/feb/04/rob...

Richard Dawkins laid down his own little twist on memes some weeks ago : http://youtu.be/GFn-ixX9edg?t=4m55s

Warning: Weirdness

Oh, they edited it in the last 8 minutes. I was copy pasting from the wikileaks post in my comment and still have a tab open where they used "have" instead.

He used 'have' after United States of America, which is a Britishism. To Americans, 'United States of America' is singular and would use "has" in this particular sentence:

For decades the United States of America have been one of the strongest defenders of the human right to seek asylum.

Maybe I'm overanalyzing but I don't think this is a verbatim statement from Snowden.

My Italian girlfriend told me the "Where are you going?" gesture is inaccurate in this video. It's mostly used as a "What the fuck?!" hypothetical question.