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Luís F. Simões

Bitcoin P2P Currency: The Most Dangerous Project We've Ever Seen - 10 views

launch.is/...dangerous-project-weve-ev.html

bitcoin p2p money disruptive

shared by Luís F. Simões on 16 May 11 - No Cached
LeopoldS liked it
  • After month of research and discovery, we’ve learned the following:1. Bitcoin is a technologically sound project.2. Bitcoin is unstoppable without end-user prosecution.3. Bitcoin is the most dangerous open-source project ever created.4. Bitcoin may be the most dangerous technological project since the internet itself.5. Bitcoin is a political statement by technotarians (technological libertarians).*6. Bitcoins will change the world unless governments ban them with harsh penalties.
  • The benefits of a currency like this:a) Your coins can’t be frozen (like a Paypal account can be)b) Your coins can’t be trackedc) Your coins can’t be taxedd) Transaction costs are extremely low (sorry credit card companies)
  • An individual with the name -- or perhaps handle -- of Satoshi Nakamoto first wrote about bitcoins in a paper called Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • * We made this term up to describe the “good people” of the internet who believe in the fundamental rights of individuals to be free, have free speech, fight hypocrisy and stand behind logic, technology and science over religion, political structure and tradition. These are the people who build and support things like Wikileaks, Anonymous, Linux and Wikipedia. They think that people can, and should, govern themselves. They are against external forms of control such as DRM, laws that are bought and sold by lobbyists, and religions like Scientology. They include splinter groups that enforce these ideals in the form of hacktivism, such as the takedown of the Sony Playstation Network after Sony tried to prosecute a hacker for unlocking its console.
  • Ma Ru on 17 May 11
     
    Sounds good!
  • ...9 more comments...
  • pacome delva on 18 May 11
     
    wow it's frigthening! it's the dream of every anarchist, every drug, arm, human dealer! the world made as a global fiscal paradise... the idea is clever however it will not replace real money because 1 - no one will build a fortune on bitcoin if a technological breakthrough can ruin them 2 - government never allowed parallel money to flourish on their territory, so it will be almost impossible to change bitcoin against euros or dollars
  • Nicholas Lan on 18 May 11
     
    interesting stuff anyone read cryptonomicon by neal stephenson? similar theme.
  • Luís F. Simões on 18 May 11
     
    :) yes. One of the comments on reddit was precisely drawing the parallels with Neal Stephenson's Snowcrash / Diamond Age / Cryptonomicon. Interesting stuff indeed. It has a lot of potential for misuse, but also opens up new possibilities. We've discussed recently how emerging technologies will drive social change. Whether it's the likes of NSA / CIA who will benefit the most from the Twitters, Facebooks and so on, by gaining greater power for control, or whether individuals are being empowered to at least an identical degree. We saw last year VISA / PayPal censoring WikiLeaks... Well, here's a way for any individual to support such an organization, in a fully anonymous and uncontrollable way...
  • tvinko on 18 May 11
     
    One of my colleagues has made a nice, short write-up about BitCoin: http://www.pds.ewi.tudelft.nl/~victor/bitcoin.html
  • LeopoldS on 18 May 11
     
    very nice analysis indeed - thanks Tamas for sharing it!
  • pacome delva on 20 May 11
     
    mmm I'm not an expert but it seemed to me that, even if these criticisms are true, there is one fundamental difference between the money you exchange on internet via your bank, and bitcoins. The first one is virtual money and the second one aims at being real, physical, money, even if digital, in the same way as banknotes, coins, or gold.
  • nikolas smyrlakis on 20 May 11
     
    An algorithm wanna-be central bank issuing untraceable tax free money between internet users? not more likely than the end of the world supposed to take place tomorrow, in my opinion. Algorithms don't usually assault women though !:P
  • LeopoldS on 21 May 11
     
    well, most money is anyway just virtual and only based on expectations and trust ... (see e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_supply) and thus if people trust that this "money" has some value in the sense that they can get something of value to them in exchange, then not much more is needed it seems to me ...
  • pacome delva on 23 May 11
     
    @Leopold: ok let's use the rigth words then. Bitcoin aim at being a currency ("physical objects generally accepted as a medium of exchange" from wikipedia), different than the "demand deposit". In the article proposed by Tamas he compares what cannot be compared (currencies, demand deposits and their mean of exchange). The interesting question is wether one can create a digital currency which is too difficult to counterfeit. As far as I know, there is no existing digital currency except this bitcoins (and maybe the currencies from games as second life and others, but which are of limited use in real world).
  • nikolas smyrlakis on 23 May 11
     
    well of course money is trust, and even more loans and credit and even more stock and bond markets. It all represents trust and expectations. However since the first banks 500 years ago and the first loans etc. etc., and as well the fact that bonds and currencies bring down whole countries (Greece lately), and are mainly controlled by large financial centres and (central) banks, banks have always been on the winning side no matter what and that isn't going to change easily. So if you are talking about these new currencies it would be a new era, not just a new currency. So should Greece convert its debt to bitcoins ;P ?
  • pacome delva on 23 May 11
     
    well, from 1936 to 1993 the central bank of france was owned by the state and was supposed to serve the general interest...
LeopoldS

Europe tackles huge fraud : Nature News - 5 views

www.nature.com/...474265a.html

science inf EU

shared by LeopoldS on 16 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • LeopoldS on 16 Jun 11
     
    they used names of scientists and research centres without these actually knowing about their involvement it seems.... I am wondering what they actually reported back in terms of results? randomly generated papers? Christos?
  • ...2 more comments...
  • Luzi Bergamin on 16 Jun 11
     
    surprised? of course not! schadenfreude? yes, a lot!
  • Christos Ampatzis on 18 Jun 11
     
    Probably some bored project officer "accepted" the deliverables as reasonable? What worries me is the last paragraph by the Committee on Industry and Research (Space is in there..., all RTD is there...) Are we going to simplify procedures or tighten more??? Because there is a lot of talk about simplification in FP8: which is not well received by Parliament/Council and co...
  • Luzi Bergamin on 18 Jun 11
     
    Hopefully I'm wrong, but I'm very pessimistic. I guess they will impose even more control, ask for even more detailed description of the results that will be delivered and concentrate even more on project funding instead of funding open research.
  • pacome delva on 20 Jun 11
     
    maybe this is what happen when there is so much paper involved... a simple phone call to one of the research scientist and the fraud is unveiled :) or maybe the "bored project officer" has a brand new mercedes...
Francesco Biscani

Former Google CIO says business misses key people marks | ITworld - 2 views

www.itworld.com/...siness-misses-key-people-marks

fun

shared by Francesco Biscani on 26 Jul 11 - No Cached
LeopoldS and Joris _ liked it
  • There is a whole cottage industry of people talking about innovation, including all kinds of garbage
  • the more project management you do the less likely your project is to succeed
  • Everyone knew we shouldn't build our own hardware as it was 'dumb', but everyone was wrong.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Just because you can do something with technology that doesn't mean you should do something with technology,
  • Francesco Biscani on 26 Jul 11
     
    Some juicy sound bites from the former Google CIO.
Joris _

Global warming: Our best guess is likely wrong - 0 views

www.physorg.com/news166795736.html

global warming climate change model

shared by Joris _ on 15 Jul 09 - Cached
  • theoretical models cannot explain what we observe in the geological record
  • There appears to be something fundamentally wrong
  • something other than carbon dioxide caused much of the heating during the PETM
  • LeopoldS on 15 Jul 09
     
    I find the title of the article misleading at best, but probably plainly wrong since they seem to talk about conditions way back and I am not sure how well our current models have been designed to work in these very different conditions? - but should probably be rather another good reason to put more effort into improving the models!
Joris _

Physicists Propose Scheme for Teleporting Light Beams - 0 views

www.physorg.com/news166779852.html

PHY

shared by Joris _ on 15 Jul 09 - Cached
  • it’s possible that a physical object (e.g. a quantum field) in one location could emerge at another location in the same quantum state
  • pacome delva on 16 Jul 09
     
    have to be carefull this article is really badly written. Teleportation is not some matter that disapear from somewhere to reappear somewhere else... Usually we talk about entangled particles (by essence quantum theory is non-local), and teleportation means that if you force (with a measurement) one particle to take a particular quantum state then the other one will have the same quantum state. There it seems that the same could be done with a quantum field, which is the second quantization of the quantum theory: the state of a quantum field can contain a mixture of n-particles states (meaning that the number of particles is not defined, only the mean value). If you measure the number of particle then you force the quantum field to "choose" a particular quantum state (which can be the vacuum). Teleportation means that you will have exactly the same measure on another quantum field, which is somehow intricated to your first one.
Juxi Leitner

Better world: Take Friday off… forever - 15 September 2009 - New Scientist - 0 views

www.newscientist.com/...d-take-friday-off-forever.html

social engineering

shared by Juxi Leitner on 16 Sep 09 - Cached
  • According to Facer, it was the crash of 1929 that led to the five-day week. "Before that it was common to work six-day weeks with 12 to 14-hour days. When the Great Depression hit, the idea was to share work around to get more people into employment." During the next big financial crisis in the 1970s, there was much talk of moving to a four-day week, but for a variety of reasons that didn't pan out. "Things are different now," says Facer. "I wouldn't be surprised if we could get 50 per cent or more of the workforce working four-day weeks in the next few years." Next up: the three-day week.
  • Ma Ru on 16 Sep 09
     
    As ACT is tasked to investigate innovative working methods... DO IT!!! :)
  • nikolas smyrlakis on 18 Sep 09
     
    but then we also have to ask who is willing to work on saturdays one day more for an extra 20% ...
nikolas smyrlakis

Sean Gourley on the mathematics of war | Video on TED.com - 0 views

www.ted.com/...on_the_mathematics_of_war.html

shared by nikolas smyrlakis on 04 May 09 - Cached
  • nikolas smyrlakis on 04 May 09
     
    By pulling raw data from the news and plotting it onto a graph, Sean Gourley and his team have come up with a stunning conclusion about the nature of modern war -- and perhaps a model for resolving conflicts. - really interesting
ESA ACT

Bruce McCall's faux nostalgia | Video on TED.com - 0 views

www.ted.com/...e_mccall_s_faux_nostalgia.html

future fun futurist presentation

shared by ESA ACT on 24 Apr 09 - Cached
  • ESA ACT on 24 Apr 09
     
    interesting presentation on past ideas of the future ...
ESA ACT

William McDonough on cradle to cradle design | Video on TED.com - 0 views

www.ted.com/...n_cradle_to_cradle_design.html

technology sustainability environment video cradle

shared by ESA ACT on 24 Apr 09 - Cached
  • ESA ACT on 24 Apr 09
     
    For EcoSat fans: He's so bleak I'm almost convinced... (Is this the same guy who came here?) Kev
Francesco Biscani

Tom Sawyer, whitewashing fences, and building communities online - 3 views

darkmattermatters.com/...nd-building-communities-online

open innovation open source

shared by Francesco Biscani on 11 Nov 09 - Cached
Ma Ru liked it
  • If you are looking to ideas like open source or social media as simple means to get what you want for your company, it’s time to rethink your community strategy.
  • I’ve talked to people at companies who are considering “open sourcing” their product because they think there is an army of people out there who will jump at the chance to build their products for them. Many of these people go on to learn tough but valuable lessons in building community. It’s not that simple.
  • Francesco Biscani on 11 Nov 09
     
    Illuminating article about corporations trying to exploit "open source" and not getting what they want.
  • LeopoldS on 12 Nov 09
     
    I like the red had definition: "To be the catalyst in communities of customers, contributors, and partners creating better technology the open source way."
  • Juxi Leitner on 12 Nov 09
     
    yeah, it is the same with crowdsourcing in general, when some company "managers" see how much cheaper they could do it but don't understand where it comes from...
LeopoldS

David Keith's unusual climate change idea | Video on TED.com - 3 views

www.ted.com/...g_ideas_on_climate_change.html

climate

shared by LeopoldS on 02 Nov 09 - Cached
  • LeopoldS on 02 Nov 09
     
    must view video from Nina ...
LeopoldS

Global Innovation Commons - 4 views

www.globalinnovationcommons.org

innovation open IP

shared by LeopoldS on 31 Oct 09 - Cached
LeopoldS liked it
  • LeopoldS on 31 Oct 09
     
    nice initiative!
  • ...6 more comments...
  • Ma Ru on 31 Oct 09
     
    Any viral licence is a bad license...
  • Francesco Biscani on 31 Oct 09
     
    I'm pretty confident I'm about to open a can of worms, but mind explaining why? :)
  • LeopoldS on 01 Nov 09
     
    I am less worried about the can of worms ... actually eager to open it ... so why????
  • Francesco Biscani on 01 Nov 09
     
    Well, the topic GPL vs other open-source licenses (e.g., BSD, MIT, etc.) is old as the internet and it has provided material for long and glorious flame wars. The executive summary is that the GPL license (the one used by Linux) is a license which imposes some restrictions on the way you are allowed to (re)use the code. Specifically, if you re-use or modify GPL code and re-distribute it, you are required to make it available again under the GPL license. It is called "viral" because once you use a bit of GPL code, you are required to make the whole application GPL - so in this sense GPL code replicates like a virus. On the other side of the spectrum, there are the so-called BSD-like licenses which have more relaxed requirements. Usually, the only obligation they impose is to acknowledge somewhere (e.g., in a README file) that you have used some BSD code and who wrote it (this is called "attribution clause"), but they do not require to re-distribute the whole application under the same license. GPL critics usually claim that the license is not really "free" because it does not allow you to do whatever you want with the code without restrictions. GPL proponents claim that the requirements imposed by the GPL are necessary to safeguard the freedom of the code, in order to avoid being able to re-use GPL code without giving anything back to the community (which the BSD license allow: early versions of Microsoft Windows, for instance, had the networking code basically copy-pasted from BSD-licensed versions of Unix). In my opinion (and this point is often brought up in the debates) the division pro/against GPL mirrors somehow the division between anti/pro anarchism. Anarchists claim that the only way to be really free is the absence of laws, while non-anarchist maintain that the only practical way to be free is to have laws (which by definition limit certain freedoms). So you can see how the topic can quickly become inflammatory :) GPL at the current time is used by aro
  • Francesco Biscani on 01 Nov 09
     
    whoa, the comment got cut off. Anyway, I was just saying that at the present time the GPL license is used by around 65% of open source projects, including the Linux kernel, KDE, Samba, GCC, all the GNU utils, etc. The topic is much deeper than this brief summary, so if you are interested in it, Leopold, we can discuss it at length in another place.
  • LeopoldS on 01 Nov 09
     
    Thanks for the record long comment - am sure that this is longest ever made to an ACT diigo post! On the topic, I would rather lean for the GPL license (which I also advocated for the Marek viewer programme we put on source forge btw), mainly because I don't trust that open source is by nature delivering a better product and thus will prevail but I still would like to succeed, which I am not sure it would if there were mainly BSD like licenses around. ... but clearly, this is an outsider talking :-)
  • LeopoldS on 01 Nov 09
     
    btw: did not know the anarchist penchant of Marek :-)
  • Ma Ru on 01 Nov 09
     
    Well, not going into the discussion about GPL/BSD, the viral license in this particular case in my view simply undermines the "clean and clear" motivations of the initiative authors - why should *they* be credited for using something they have no rights for? And I don't like viral licences because they prevent using things released under this licence to all those people who want to release their stuff under a different licence, thus limiting the usefulness of the stuff released on that licence :) BSD is not a perfect license too, it also had major flaws And I'm not an anarchist, lol
Luís F. Simões

Ralph Langner: Cracking Stuxnet, a 21st-century cyber weapon | Video on TED.com - 2 views

www.ted.com/..._21st_century_cyberweapon.html

INF cyberwarfare TED

shared by Luís F. Simões on 04 Apr 11 - No Cached
LeopoldS liked it
  • When first discovered in 2010, the Stuxnet computer worm posed a baffling puzzle. Beyond its unusually high level of sophistication loomed a more troubling mystery: its purpose. Ralph Langner and team helped crack the code that revealed this digital warhead's final target -- and its covert origins. In a fascinating look inside cyber-forensics, he explains how.
Luís F. Simões

Christoph Adami: Finding life we can't imagine | Video on TED.com - 2 views

www.ted.com/...ing_life_we_can_t_imagine.html

TED ALife extraterrestrial_life exobiology BIO

shared by Luís F. Simões on 11 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • How do we search for alien life if it's nothing like the life that we know? At TEDxUIUC Christoph Adami shows how he uses his research into artificial life -- self-replicating computer programs -- to find a signature, a 'biomarker,' that is free of our preconceptions of what life is.
jcunha

First Terahertz Amplifier "Goes to 11" - 2 views

spectrum.ieee.org/...ilds-first-terahertz-amplifier

technology

shared by jcunha on 06 Nov 14 - No Cached
LeopoldS liked it
  • jcunha on 06 Nov 14
     
    Guinness World Record breaking, "first radio amplifier operating at terahertz frequencies could lead to communications systems with much higher data rates, better radar, high-resolution imaging that could penetrate smoke and fog, and better ways of identifying dangerous substances, say the researchers who built it". Built from HEMTs (High Electron Mobility Transistors) made of InP (Indium Phosphide), this is a new milestone on the road to the THz applications.
Christophe Praz

Brain decoder can eavesdrop on your inner voice - 4 views

www.newscientist.com/...sdrop-on-your-inner-voice.html

BIO AI brain technology

shared by Christophe Praz on 04 Nov 14 - No Cached
jessyjemy liked it
  • Christophe Praz on 04 Nov 14
     
    "As you read this, your neurons are firing - that brain activity can now be decoded to reveal the silent words in your head TALKING to yourself used to be a strictly private pastime. That's no longer the case - researchers have eavesdropped on our internal monologue for the first time. The achievement is a step towards helping people who cannot physically speak communicate with the outside world." Or alternatively, a step towards snooping into individuals' privacy.
  • Beniamino Abis on 04 Nov 14
     
    Soon we'll be able to see movies about our dreams!
  • alekenolte on 06 Nov 14
     
    Only if you are willing to have a chip implanted into/onto your brain though ^^
jcunha

'Superman memory crystal' that could store 360TB of data forever | ExtremeTech - 0 views

www.extremetech.com/...that-could-store-360tb-of-data

technology 5D PHY memory TB

shared by jcunha on 22 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • jcunha on 22 Feb 16
     
    A new so called 5D data storage that could potentially survive for billions of years. The research consists of nanostructured glass that can record digital data in five dimensions using femtosecond laser writing.
  • ...2 more comments...
  • jcunha on 22 Feb 16
     
    Very scarce scientific info available.. I'm very curious to see a bit more in future. From https://spie.org/PWL/conferencedetails/laser-micro-nanoprocessing I made a back of envelop calc: for 20 nm spaced, each laser spot in 5D encryption encodes 3 bits (it seemed to me) written in 3 planes, to obtain the claimed 360TB disk one needs very roughly 6000mm2, which does not complain with the dimensions shown in video. Only with larger number of planes (order of magnitude higher) it could be.. Also, at current commercial trends NAND Flash and HDD allow for 1000 Gb/in2. This means a 360 TB could hypothetically fit in 1800mm2.
  • Alexander Wittig on 22 Feb 16
     
    I had the same issue with the numbers when I saw the announcement a few days back (https://www.southampton.ac.uk/news/2016/02/5d-data-storage-update.page). It doesn't seem to add up. Plus, the examples they show are super low amounts of data (the bible probably fits on a few 1.44 MB floppy disk). As for the comparison with NAND and HDD, I think the main argument for their crystal is that it is supposedly more durable. HDDs are chronically bad at long term storage, and also NAND as far as I know needs to be refreshed frequently.
  • jcunha on 23 Feb 16
     
    Yes Alex, indeed, the durability is the point I think they highlight and focus on (besides the fact the abstract says something as the extrapolated decay time being comparable to the age of the Universe..). Indeed memories face problems with retention time. Most of the disks retain the information up to 10 years. When enterprises want to store data for longer times than this they use... yeah, magnetic tapes :-). Check a interesting article about magnetic tape market revival here http://www.information-age.com/technology/data-centre-and-it-infrastructure/123458854/rise-fall-and-re-rise-magnetic-tape I compared for fun, to have one idea of what we were talking about. I am also very curious so see the writing and reading times in this new memory :)
  • joergmueller on 23 Feb 16
     
    But how can glass store the information so long? Glass is not even solid?!
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