Identity is Currency, Privacy is Wealth: A Chat with "Hacking the Future" Author Cole Stryker. Cole Stryker is a real name, but it belongs to a writer who has written two books in as many years that investigate the ways that people push culture forward — or in some cases, backward — under the cloak of fake names. Epic Win for Anonymous is about memes, hackers, lulz, 4chan, and the other strange things on the web that perplex and disgust us when they’re not pushing for internet freedom. Cole’s new book is called Hacking the Future, and it takes a tour through historical and contemporary efforts to protect identity, from early political pamphlets through the heyday of the 1980s cypherpunks up to the virtual barricades of online protests against the incursions of big data, big companies, and snooping governments, all for the purpose of preparing us for the future. The best weapon we have online, Cole argues, is anonymity, which, far from the days of AOL, is now under attack from governments and big Internet companies.
How did you get that amazing name? It’s a pseudonym, right? B-). A Guide to Bitcoin Mining: Why Someone Bought a $1,500 Bitcoin Miner on eBay for $20,600. With the price of bitcoins skyrocketing, mining is suddenly big business, so enticingly big that one wannabe miner was willing to pay a 1,333 percent premium to get his (or her) foot in the door of this wildly lucrative bitcoin bonanza. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the bitcoin gold rush. The craziest part? This wasn’t an auction for a physical, working, ready-to-ship bitcoin mining machine from Avalon, which claims to be the first to develop turnkey, bitcoin-specific mining computers for sale.
For $20,600 (bidding started at a reasonable $500), the lucky winner only received a place in line and the promise that an actual (pre-ordered) miner will be delivered sometime next month. If that sounds ridiculous, well, it’s because it quite possibly is. But clearly there are bitcoin-savvy folks betting that paying 13 times the price of a machine will actually pay off. How bitcoin mining works Click to enlarge: How bitcoin works, by Joshua J.
Anyone can technically become a miner. Why Bitcoins Are Just Like Gold. King Tut's golden burial mask, via Bjørn Christian Tørrissen Plenty of people still have a difficult time wrapping their heads around what bitcoin is or why it even has value, especially as the virtual cryptocurrency continues to scale record heights. How isn't this a Ponzi scheme, many have wondered? A good way to look at it is to compare it to gold. What gives a shiny metal that doesn't have a whole lot of real utility--outside of jewelry and limited industrial use--any kind of real world value? The only reason gold has value is because one day, way back when, long before recorded history, society simply decided that this yellowish precious metal should represent “money.” As a representative (and thus store) of value, it became a universal intermediary between goods and services.
Uninscribed Lydian coins made from electrum, a naturally occurring gold and silver alloy, 6th century BCE. Why the chemical element Au? Gold bars in Fort Knox. So why bitcoin? @sfnuop Connections. Signs of Sex: Sexual Interpretations to Common Road Signs. Page 116 of Desktop Wallpaper. Page 10 of Desktop Wallpaper. Top 100 Lenses by Topic : Internet. Motivational Posters Humormotivational poster sayings | motivational poster wallpaper | motivational posters humor | funny motivational posters. Crazy funny pictures of insane internet. I'm totally antisocial!