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Good day, My family and I are currently searching for another email provider. We are seeking a service which uses SMTP-TLS in order to protect their clients privacy. Any suggestions/recommendations? Does anyone use FastMail? Thanks, TJI

Apr 15, 2014 4:03PM ET / Politics Your Photo Could Be Included in the FBI’s New Facial Recognition Database Lucy Westcott If you're applying for a job in the near future, there's a chance you could end up on the FBI's imminent new facial recognition database alongside criminals, whether you like it or not. According to information obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the database, known as Next Generation Identification (NGI), will for the first time combine criminal and noncriminal fingerprint databases, along with records of palm prints, iris scans, and mugshots. The NGI, which sounds like Facebook mixed with...

A tech question for source writers. My company is using the latest greatest version of cabnetware (planit). Every upgrade causes compatibility issues when accessing files written under previous versions. More to the point I have told my upper management to download all closed accounts to a portable or standalone drive instead of archiving and delete the previous versions they were designed with. It seems something will over ride commands from the design computer synced with the CNC - bypassing the set parameters- to a template (that exists) but is unincorporated. Randomly picking a "new" parameter. Is it the ghost Of...

Earnest 'Barry' Elliot 3/11/1955 - 4/12/2014

Alpha Technology has a new development update and its Viper scrypt board seems to be making headway. The British ASIC maker said it has completed the schematics for the ATX power distribution board and of the AC power metering board. Those of the actual ASIC board are not complete yet, but Alpha said it is “almost” done. In addition, the company has finalised the design of the enclosure and WebGUI user interface. ... In any case, the advent of powerful and immensely efficient scrypt ASICs is not good news for GPU miners, as the ASICs will render GPU-based miners uncompetitive...

Whether it's attached to a small business, a large corporation or maybe as a business in itself, a blog is a reflection of its owner. But you're not the only one blogging. There are an estimated 68,124,670 WordPress sites, and for good reason; an active blog is necessary for a successful SEO initiative. Add to the mix the sites that run LiveJournal, Blogger, TypePad or one of the other blogging platforms, and there are easily over 150 million blogs on the Internet; so how do you get yours to stand out from the pack? Many say that if you write...

Good evening, Freepers... Our PC ran on Win XP, and although we continue to use our Dell, I'm in the market for yet another laptop to replace this XP. There's one particular laptop that's caught my eye today. The Dell Inspiron 17 7000 looks like a decent buy. Would any of you happen to own this model? If so, would you care to share your advice/suggestions? If any of you have some information that would be helpful, I'd appreciate it. Thank you for your time and assistance. TJI

The price of bitcoin recovered from a low of roughly $380 and rose past $420 at press time on 11th April, on the news that Zhou Xiaochuan, the governor of the People’s Bank of China (PBOC), had issued new statements potentially clarifying the central bank’s position on bitcoin. According to reports, during Boao Forum, Xiaochuan offered his opinion on the nascent technology, saying that China would not seek to ban bitcoin and other digital currencies entirely.

Bitcoin prices crashed today as Chinese businesses began receiving official deposit shutdown notices from banks, confirming recent suspicions of an impending crackdown. Exchanges will stop account recharging via bank accounts between now and 15th April. Even though the news has been anticipated for over a week now, bitcoin prices sank under $403 from a high of $450.74 on the CoinDesk Bitcoin Price Index after companies began making public announcements on their sites.

Without personally knowing any cyber criminals (I think using hackers is unfair to… well, hackers), we can probably assume they are not very different from other criminals in that they do what they do for a few basic reasons: •Ego: defacing websites to gain street cred •Ideology: wreaking havoc to make political statements or wage asymmetric warfare •Money: engaging in good old-fashioned criminal capitalism (to the tune of $3 trillion) It’s this third motivation that is in the news the most, and it’s not because these criminals are infiltrating banks and making off with the loot. In fact it’s...

My laptop suddenly was less responsive. I regularly run disc cleanup and defrag, using the built in Win 7 tools. On a whim, I installed Defraggler and it shows my HD 14% fragmented. I was stuned.

US Congressman Steve Stockman of Texas is preparing to introduce a new bill, the ‘Virtual Currency Tax Reform Act’, which, if passed, would tax bitcoins as currency instead of property. Currently, the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) views bitcoin and other digital currencies as property. When someone sells their bitcoin or makes a purchase in bitcoin, they are subject to a 15% capital gains tax. Any wages paid out in digital currencies must also be reported to federal tax authorities.

What would you do if the Internet or the power grid went down for over a year? Our key infrastructure, including the Internet and the power grid, is far more vulnerable than most people would dare to imagine. These days, most people simply take for granted that the lights will always be on and that the Internet will always function properly. But what if all that changed someday in the blink of an eye? According to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's latest report, all it would take to plunge the entire nation into darkness for more than a year...

Snip What You Can Do It is important that people give Mozilla pushback--and a lot of it--because the less people suffer the consequences of this kind of behavior, the more it will be invited in the future. You want Christians to experience a new and even worse persecution than what they're facing now? Do nothing. You want to fight back? Here's what you can do . . .   1) Mozilla has a web page where you can leave feedback on its Firefox browser. THAT WEB PAGE IS HERE. At the time of this writing, the feedback in the last...

Vanity: Why is american thinker down?

Mitchell Baker, executive chair of Mozilla, announced on the company’s blog that Brendan Eich, former Mozilla CEO has stepped down “for Mozilla and our community.� His sin: contributing $1000 in 2008 in support of California’s Prop 8, which upheld traditional marriage.Now, Mozilla is a company that takes great pride in their – ahem – tolerance and open-mindedness. Really. Mozilla believes both in equality and freedom of speech. Equality is necessary for meaningful speech. And you need free speech to fight for equality. Figuring out how to stand for both at the same time can be hard.Our organizational culture reflects diversity...

eBay’s main US site has introduced a category for ‘Virtual Currency’, with listings for dozens of bitcoin and altcoin-related activities – including shares in mining operations. Although eBay is still not accepting bitcoin as an official payment, any recognition of the currency is significant since eBay is the parent company of PayPal, the payments firm long earmarked for disruption by many bitcoin fans. The popular online auction site and marketplace quietly included the category in its ‘Category Changes‘ list for April under ‘Coins and Paper Money’. At press time there were multiple entries for bitcoin and altcoin trades, Mining Hardware,...

This post is of interest to ham radio operators, and also anyone who wishes to monitor NOAA weather radio, police, fire, EMS, aircraft, marine, and other radio traffic using a $15 receiver plugged into your laptop. The Chinese USB "dongles", originally intended to receive the Far East mobile television service, are being re-purposed as VHF/UHF receivers for many different modulation schemes and protocols.  The software to re-purpose them runs either on a PC (Win/Mac/Linux), or on a single-board computer like a Raspberry PI (Raspian Linux). At about US$15, Ol' Backwoods just had to have one. The RTL-SDR receives on...

The US House of Representatives committee on small business held a hearing on 2nd April to discuss the growing use of bitcoin by the country’s small business owners (SMBs), and the pros and cons that using this technology as a payment option offers the demographic. Entitled ‘Bitcoin: Examining the Benefits and Risks for Small Business’, a panel of experts spoke about the benefits and costs of the use of bitcoin by SMBs, while also touching on hot topics like Silk Road and the recent IRS decision on the tax treatment of digital currencies. Committee Chairman Sam Graves noted in his...

Update: After I posted this story, one of the people harassing Airman Kolfage left a threat on his Facebook page. According to Airman Kolfage, the person is Darren Remington, an employee of FedEx. The ingredients in the comment are for making homemade C4.Last year I wrote an article about former union director Janet Vrostos who told Iraq War vet Brian Kolfage, “I hope you all lose your limbs and die.” Brian lost both legs and an arm in the war. Now it seems that Janet’s friend, Jackie Millinor, an important volunteer with Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren’s reelection campaign, started a...

A petition to amend Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Notice 2014-2, the new guidance released on 25th March that announced digital currencies would be treated as property for tax purposes, has been filed on WhiteHouse.gov. Managed by the presiding presidential administration, the official website of the White House allows for the filing of public petitions on all manner of subjects, from whether Election Day should be a designated holiday to whether Alaska should secede from the US and join Russia. Petitions that cross a certain threshold of signatures then generally garner a White House response. Filed on 28th March, the new...

Does the IRS really want to you to track your capital gains on bitcoin every time you buy a sandwich or a sweater in the digital currency? After our analysis of the Internal Revenue Service guidelines on bitcoin, released in March, some people expressed surprise. They were amazed that the IRS could seriously be applying capital gains rules to something that the bitcoin community sees as a currency, and which in many cases uses as such. “This can’t be good for bitcoin”, said one commenter privately to Coindesk. ” If it’s not a currency, then how are you supposed to...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev) vociferously denied ever accusing victims of Obamacare of lying about their troubles. He dismissed video evidence of him making such accusations as “bogus.” “In an earlier era ‘seeing is believing’ might have been a powerful verification of reality,” Reid said. “However, in this age of increasingly sophisticated computers, software, and savvy users one can no longer count on believing one’s own eyes and ears. It is inconceivable to me that I would have made such a foolish and politically inept assertion in public.” Reid’s portrayal of sophisticated computer users victimizing him clashed with his...

Aw crap, new program loaded adware/malware program from Ads by Quiknowledge. What do FReepers recommend as removal/guard programs?

A new report by researchers at ETH Zurich University in Switzerland has concluded that the now-bankrupt Japan-based bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox may have lost only 386 bitcoins ($203,000) due to issues stemming from transaction malleability. The finding provides new evidence that Mt. Gox’s continued claims that issues with the Bitcoin protocol were the primary reason for its insolvency are perhaps misleading or untrue. Released on 26th March, the report was authored by Christian Decker and Professor Roger Wattenhofer, both of the university’s Distributed Computing Group (DCG). Overall, the authors found that only 302,000 bitcoins could have ever been involved in...

Less than a week after a fake Chinese news report sent bitcoin and litecoin prices plummeting on some exchanges, another similar rumour hit the Internet today. News that the Chinese government would penalize any bank transacting with bitcoin exchanges after 15th April started to break around mid-morning China time on Thursday 27th March. This time, it was reported as fact by a number of news services. The bitcoin price, already on a downward trend, dropped to a low of $561.61 on CoinDesk’s BPI and below the $550 mark on Chinese exchanges. The latest report gave all the usual reasons a...

YouTube:1954 Commercial for the UNIVAC Computer This 1954 commercial for the Univac Computer is hilariously anachronistic. It is the first electronic computing system to be proven by widespread use. Because of its exclusive self-checking features, Univac can not make a mistake. They said the same thing about the HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The US Internal Revenue Service finally announced its guidance for virtual currencies yesterday, explicitly referring to bitcoin (see the announcement here and notice here). The increased clarity – provided three weeks before the end of the US tax year - will come as a relief to many who were scared to get involved in bitcoin, commercially. But what does it mean for different members of the bitcoin community? US businesses wanting to get involved in bitcoin have been waiting for this for a while. As recently as January, US Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson pressured the IRS in her annual report...

The Bitcoin Tipping Point is coming and it will be the Big Bang of disruption in financial services, money and payments as we know them! I often think about the “tipping-point” in Bitcoin’s journey to mass adoption and regularly as myself several questions. When will it be noticeable and what will trigger it? Has it already begun or if not, how far away are we? How do you define or measure “mass adoption” of Bitcoin? A bitcoin meme of Morpheus and Neo posted online recently got me thinking again about how Bitcoin’s true exit most likely itself. Once a significant...

Microsoft hopes to make it easier for Windows XP users to drop their old computers and upgrade to a newer Surface or PC by offering them $100 to do so. The Redmond-based company announced earlier this month that support and security updates will no longer be available for its popular old operating system after April 8. That doesn’t mean the computers will immediately become unusable, but they may be more vulnerable to hackers. Windows XP users can get $100 off when they buy a Surface Pro 2 or select PCs for $599 and more. The cheapest is an Acer Aspire...

Notoriously tight-lipped bitcoin exchange and CoinDesk Bitcoin Price Index member BTC-e is now allowing customers to withdraw funds to Visa and MasterCard debit and credit cards, with some exceptions. The company blog post, issued on 21st March, indicated that the new program is now available to customers in any country, using any currency. All customers will pay a 5% fee for the service. The new functionality is noteworthy as it will allow customers to send money to debit and credit cards issued by two of the largest and most commonly used international card issuers. At present, the transfer of funds...

A new report suggests that Mt. Gox, the now-bankrupt Japan-based exchange said to have lost 850,000 BTC in customer funds may actually still be in possession of 200,000 BTC ($118m at press time). The news, published by Yahoo Japan, allegedly comes from the exchange’s bankruptcy lawyer who suggests the bitcoins were found on 7th March in a wallet used by Mt. Gox prior to June 2011. The 200,000 bitcoins would equate to just over 23% of the entirety of the funds presumed lost by the company in the wake of widespread theft that is said to have occurred on the...

Despite what you are hearing in the media, more and more blacks are realizing what whites learned long ago: just because someone shares your skin color doesn't necessarily make them a good executive. Translation: Obama isn't going to save them, and is in fact, working against their best interests...

At the latest Bloomberg Breakfast event held in New York on 18th March, David S Cohen, Under Secretary of the US Department of the Treasury, discussed the challenges of digital currencies as part of a broader conversation with the media outlet’s Matt Miller to air on Bloomberg TV. In the hour-long talk, Cohen spoke about the organisation’s role as a global leader in educating consumers and governments on the evolving issue, paying a particular interest to the potential illicit uses of digital currencies, as well as the measures it is willing to take to ensure their proper use. Most notably,...

The U.S. government’s plan to give away authority over the Internet’s core architecture to the “global Internet community” could endanger the security of both the Internet and the U.S. — and open the door to a global tax on Web use. “U.S. management of the internet has been exemplary and there is no reason to give this away — especially in return for nothing,” former Bush administration State Department senior advisor Christian Whiton told The Daily Caller. “This is the Obama equivalent of Carter’s decision to give away the Panama Canal — only with possibly much worse consequences.” The U.S....

Need advice on upgrading from Windows XP to Windows 7

Remember the internet in 1996, everyone kinda knew what it was about. It was something big, new, and vast—but what exactly it did for you was unclear. Bitcoin is in a similar state: It’s fairly new, unclear, and holds enormous promise just like the early Internet. The only difference is you can actually buy a piece of the Bitcoin network. This article is for the professional that has a reasonable savings (whatever that means to you) and at least a basic understanding of investing. You may likely invest in stocks, bonds, real estate, your own business, and many other things....

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) plans to introduce legislation to prevent a “takeover” of the Internet by the United Nations or another government regime. Speaking Monday at Google’s office in Washington, the possible presidential contender said he will introduce legislation to codify U.S. support of an open Internet as other countries attempt to control its growth. “Since the Web is worldwide — and since it has proven such an effective catalyst for pro-democratic revolution — it has become a battleground that many fight to control,” he said.

Troubled Japan-based bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox has filed for Chapter 15 bankruptcy protection, an ancillary form of bankruptcy that will complement its primary Tokyo District Court claim issued on 28th February. US Chapter 15 bankruptcy provides specific protections in cases of cross-border insolvency, and is based on UN model law. Both Japan and the US have adopted Chapter 15 bankruptcy in an effort to better protect the interests of shareholders and maximize the value of debtor assets in cross-border bankruptcies.

Hackers (or disgruntled insiders) claim to have released a 700+MB file of Mt. Gox operational information and transaction data, including one sheet claiming the exchange could still have a balance of over 951,116 BTC. One of the hackers managed to post the data on Gox CEO Mark Karpeles’ own blog, then announced the feat on Reddit. Karpeles’ site has since gone completely offline and Reddit moderators deleted the original post. At press time the mods were engaged in a cat and mouse game with other community members who re-posted the original quote and several links claiming to be mirrors of...

Whether in early 2017 it’s President Hillary Clinton, President Jeb Bush, President Chris Christie, President Joe Biden or someone else, the individual occupying the Oval Office would face new limits on executive orders, Commerce Clause actions, a balanced federal budget and a ban on using international treaties to govern inside the U.S. if a state-based movement is successful. ... Snip ...

Dispatches How Covert Agents Infiltrate the Internet to Manipulate, Deceive, and Destroy Reputations A page from a GCHQ top secret document prepared by its secretive JTRIG unit "One of the many pressing stories that remains to be told from the Snowden archive is how western intelligence agencies are attempting to manipulate and control online discourse with extreme tactics of deception and reputation-destruction. It’s time to tell a chunk of that story, complete with the relevant documents. Over the last several weeks, I worked with NBC News to publish a series of articles about “dirty trick” tactics used by GCHQ’s previously...

Some savvy bitcoin investors have a solution to cyberthieves and instability shaking online exchanges: They print out their virtual savings and hide them in the real world. The shuttering this week of bitcoin exchange Mt.Gox and fears that hundreds of millions of dollars worth of the virtual currency have been lost or stolen are pushing investors to tighten their security. Touted by advocates as a new, digital type of money that could one day replace real-world cash, bitcoins can also be stored like traditional currencies, locked up in a safe, or hidden in a shoe box. Enthusiasts around the world...

Good evening. Would anyone know how to delete ALL "like" choices I've posted on Facebook? Your assistance is deeply appreciate. Thank You, TJI

We’re beginning to see more and more discussions about how the laws, policies and regulations of our federal, state and local governments are working to impoverish the people of this country and restrict their liberties. So much so that even the taboo topic of a potential Ukraine-style collapse right here in America is now being openly discussed in mainstream circles. In a recent panel discussion on Fox News the question of whether or not Ukraine rioting is the future of America came to the forefront and long-time political operative and former Presidential adviser Pat Caddell weighed in. Like many of...

Everyone please send whatever you are able to, whether it is $10, $100 or $1,000+. The Left loves to see these go on and on. Better for us to just help with what we can. Maybe you can donate as a memorial for a lost loved one, a friend, a servicemember who never made it home or was disabled defending our country or another hero. Perhaps you'd like to give to keep free discussion alive and to show them that we're not knuckling under. I'm sure a well thought out or prayerful meditation will lead you to see the need...

PMB is safer and more private because it doesn’t use the usual technology to send emails and instant messages, or to transfer files. Traditional email systems focus on sending mails through a series of relays until each piece is put back together for the recipient. Here’s how that system works. Why PMB Keeps Your Information Private Our patented, cutting-edge technology doesn’t use relay servers to deliver your communications. We establish a private, electronic stream between you and the database and your recipient and the database. This approach not only gives the messages you send, electronically, an unprecedented level of security...

A forgotten letter from a mystery First World War sailor has found its way to his granddaughter after almost a century. The note dated 1916 was discovered behind a fireplace in Kirkwall, Orkney, and signed ‘Your Blue Jacket Boy’. Addressed to the serviceman’s family, it was sealed and stamped but never posted. Staff at Orkney Library hoped to identify the letter writer and launched an appeal on their blog. The hunt spread to Canada, where a distant relative suggested the sailor might be David John Phillips from Llanelli, South Wales. The relative contacted Mary Hodge in Chester, who recognised the...

Imagine the heartache of the cis-trans male who opens up Facebook and realizes there’s no gender category for him to choose from. It’s only male and female. This is just too outré for words.  Doesn’t everyone know that gender is a social construct – that gender is malleable and may change from moment to moment? One could be five or six or seven of them before lunchtime and a few dozen more before climbing under the covers and turning into a butterfly, or whatever. Gender is not in the head, you know, it is not in the brain. You are...

Miniaturization, robotics, and the hastening automation economy are coming together in interesting new ways. Personal drone delivery services could be a fast-arriving concept. Amazon announced PrimeAir in November 2013, to possibly be ready for launch in 2015 pending US FAA regulations of personal drone airspace. In the ideal case, the service would deliver ordered items within 30-60 minutes. Similarly, Dubai and the UAE announced a personalized drone delivery service including eye-scanning verification for government documents. Personalized or at least targeted micro-delivery via drones is not a new idea. One obvious use is delivering aid, medicine, and other supplies to remote,...