Tech sector warns of harm from Liberals' Budget

Industry leaders are warning that the Liberals' Budget 2024 could cause "irreparable harm" to the tech sector in Canada.

Tech sector slams Liberals’ capital gains tax hike as “irreparable harm” | True North | Isaac Lamoreux: 

April 17, 2024 - "The Liberal government’s 2024 federal budget has sent shockwaves through Canada’s tech sector, with sweeping increases to capital gains taxes being the main cause for concern. Leaders within the industry are voicing criticism at the Liberals, suggesting that further taxation could drive businesses and talent south of the border. The budget, delivered by Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, raises the inclusion rate for capital gains tax from 50% to 66% for individuals on amounts exceeding $250,000. The amendments to the Income Tax Act will come into effect on June 25, 2024. The Liberals expect to make $19.4 billion over the next five years from [the move].... 

"Benjamin Bergen, president of the Council of Canadian Innovators, explained in his organization’s response to the budget that the best way for the government to boost its revenue is to drive economic growth and productivity gains by helping Canada’s innovators. 'We hope that Minister Freeland and the Liberal government will listen to innovators and adjust this proposed tax hike before they do irreparable harm to the Canadian innovation economy,' he said....

"Local entrepreneur Boris Wertz ... felt that the Liberals had 'lost their plot on innovation and entrepreneurship.' His biggest concerns were 'trying to pick winners (e.g. superclusters); proposing very rigid AI regulations; dramatic increase of number of public sector employees; (and) increasing capital gain rate.' The budget promises to invest $2.4 billion in AI support, $5.1 million of which will be dedicated toward the Artificial Intelligence and Data Act — ensuring that AI is 'safe and non-discriminatory,' according to the Liberal government.... 

"Kim Furlong, CEO of the Canadian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association, said that her organization is 'baffled' by the Liberals’ decision to increase the capital gains tax. 'This measure, which effectively taxes innovation and risk-taking, will significantly dampen Canada’s entrepreneurial spirit, stifle economic growth in critical sectors of our economy, and impact job creation. Such policy change undermines Canada’s position to attract the talent needed to grow and scale companies here,' she said. 'CVCA will work tirelessly to reverse this decision,' said Furlong.

"The founder of a venture capital firm, Christian Lassonde, said that Canada is desperate for new investment dollars. 'What does this government do? Punish investing. You can’t make this stuff up,' he wrote in a post to X.

"President and CEO of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, Dan Kelly, said that the capital gains tax changes will demotivate Canadians from starting businesses in the first place. 'Several sectors of Canada’s (small and medium enterprises) community will be hit with higher capital gain taxes on business sales above $2.25 million, including restaurants, hotels, doctors’ offices, insurance brokers, real estate firms, recreation and arts and recreation firms,' said Kelly in a post to X.

"Armon Shokravi, co-founder of a software development business, explained in a post to X that the tax changes, of an inclusion rate from 50 to 66%, would increase the net capital gains tax from 27% to 36%, compared to the United States, who have a tax rate of 20%. 'In my conversations with Canadian entrepreneurs, it’s clear: They’re feeling less motivated to build businesses here when moving just a bit south could mean saving a lot more,' he said..... 

"Independent MP Kevin Vuong shared a text message from a local business owner. The former founder, who works in the tech sector, said that they and their partner sat down last night and began the process of moving to the United States. 'We’re leaving to a country that celebrates entrepreneurs and innovation,' they said. 'The world is too competitive for talent and Canada is not competitive anymore.'

Read more: https://tnc.news/2024/04/17/liberals-capital-gains-tax-hike-irreparable-harm/

Budget 2024 picks a fight with Canadian tech | BetaKit Podcast | April 22, 2024: 

Hidden costs of decarbonizing energy

The Hard Math of Minerals | Issues in Science and Technology - Mark P. Mills: 

January 27, 2022 - "Today’s plans to decarbonize global energy systems center on a massive expansion in the use of solar, wind, and battery technologies, with the goal of these becoming the dominant means to power society. But scaling up these energy sources entails a radically heavier materials footprint than is associated with fossil fuels.... The unavoidable scale of materials demand will have significant impacts on commodities markets and prices, as well as on the environment. Most policy formulations fail to account for these implications. The country is long overdue for thoughtful and realistic planning that honestly acknowledges the tradeoffs and consequences arising from the materials needed to accelerate what is being called the energy transition.

"It has long been known that building solar and wind systems requires roughly a tenfold increase in the total tonnage of common materials — concrete, steel, glass, etc. — to deliver the same quantity of energy compared to building a natural gas or other hydrocarbon-fueled power plant. Beyond that, supplying the same quantity of energy as conventional sources with solar and wind equipment, along with other aspects of the energy transition such as using electric vehicles (EVs), entails an enormous increase in the use of specialty minerals and metals like copper, nickel, chromium, zinc, cobalt: in many instances, it’s far more than a tenfold increase.... Installing so much wind and solar generation capacity worldwide has profound materials implications, not to mention land requirements.... Replacing the energy output from a single 100 megawatt (MW) natural gas-fired turbine (producing enough electricity for 75,000 homes) requires at least 20 wind turbines, each about 500 feet tall and collectively requiring some 30,000 tons of iron ore and 50,000 tons of concrete, ... requir[ing] 10 square miles of land. And although a solar installation would require one-third as much land as wind, the aggregate tonnage of cement, steel, and glass used is about 150% greater than wind.

"Scaling up solar, wind, and batteries also means scaling up the mining of the refined minerals they require. There is a significant environmental impact associated with the sheer tonnage of earth that must be moved and processed to produce these refined minerals. To produce one ton of a purified element, a far greater quantity of ore must be extracted and processed. Copper ores, for example, typically contain only about 0.5% by weight of the element itself: roughly 200 tons of ore are dug up, moved, crushed, and refined to produce 1 ton of copper.... Cobalt (used in most batteries) occurs at a grade typically lower than 1 ton of the element per 1,500 tons of ore.... The IEA [International Energy Agency] ... estimates that an energy plan more ambitious than implied by the 2015 Paris Agreement, but one that remains far short of eliminating the use of fossil fuels, would increase demand for minerals such as lithium, graphite, nickel, and cobalt rare earths by 4,200%, 2,500%, 1,900% and 700%, respectively, by 2040.... The IEA report is not alone in pointing out that the required mining and processing infrastructure capacities don’t yet exist to meet the demand for essentially every category of mineral necessary for the transition path. 

"In a recent report from the Geological Survey of Finland, researchers considered the minerals implications for ... using solar and wind to electrify all ground transport as well as to produce hydrogen for both aviation and chemical processes. They found the resulting demand for nearly every necessary mineral, including common ones such as copper, nickel, graphite, and lithium, would exceed not just existing and planned global production capabilities, but also known global reserves of those minerals. A recent analysis by the Wood Mackenzie consultancy found that if EVs are to account for two-thirds of all new car purchases by 2030, dozens of new mines must be opened just to meet automotive demands — each mine the size of the world’s biggest in each category today. But 2030 is only eight years away and, as the IEA has reported, opening a new mine takes 16 years on average....

"Another area of concern for these new technologies is their future cost.... Today, future plans for solar, wind, and battery technologies assume costs will continue to fall significantly, as they have over the last decade. But the implications of record-breaking demands for mineral commodities suggest the reverse is more likely. Consider batteries.... Numerous estimates ... suggest that commodity materials comprise 60 to 70% of the cost to produce a battery. Thus, modest increases in commodity prices can wipe out gains in the smaller share of costs associated with assembly, electronics, and labor, leading to overall higher costs.... In fact, 2021 saw high material costs lead to overall lithium battery prices declining by only 6%. That was a dramatic slowdown from the decadal trend, and less than half the decline rate in each of the prior two years. Although EVs comprise only 5% of the market for automobiles, the price index of EV battery metals has already increased by more than 200% over the past two years....

"There is, in short, no escaping the fact that the astonishing scale of global materials production needed for proposed energy transition plans will almost certainly place severe limits on aspirations for expanding the use of wind, solar, and battery systems. But even before those limits are reached, the pursuit of a materials-heavy energy infrastructure will cause economic impacts that ripple beyond energy markets, inflating the cost of nonenergy uses for the same minerals in computers, conventional manufacturing equipment, everyday consumer appliances, and more. Beyond economics, there are also the practical and geopolitical challenges arising from realignments of energy material supply chains..... Finally, there are the social and moral implications associated with a radical shift in the types and locations of environmental impacts that comes from replacing drilling (for fossil fuels) with a massive expansion in mining, much of which will occur in emerging markets and fragile ecosystems....

"Based on today’s physics and technology, the only path to an energy system with a material intensity lower than hydrocarbons would be one focused on nuclear fission.... Nuclear fission offers a potential hundredfold reduction in material intensity over combustion, and a thousandfold reduction over solar and wind. Here too, though, even if policies are implemented that are conducive to a nuclear renaissance, meaningful expansion will take decades longer than the rapid transition timelines popular today.

"The material realities associated with solar, wind, and storage technologies do not obviate an expanded, or even a substantial, role for these energy systems. However, believing that such technologies make possible a rapid and wholesale replacement of fossil fuels ignores the underlying physics, engineering, and economics. Even more troublesome, putting so much effort and money into those technologies will lead the world down a path that won’t meet targets to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, but would cause massive collateral damage to economies and the environment."

Read more: https://issues.org/environmental-economic-costs-minerals-solar-wind-batteries-mills/

The espionage that took down Nortel

Did Huawei bring down Nortel? Corporate espionage, theft, and the parallel rise and fall of two telecom giants | The Intelligencer - Tom Blackwell:

February 24, 2020 - "Nortel Networks ... led the way in developing digital telephone networks worldwide in the 1970s and 1980s. By the turn of the last century ... it boasted over 90,000 employees and ... accounted for a third of the worth of companies on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Its technological prowess is still legendary.... Then, in 2000, the speculative Internet bubble that had so elevated Nortel suddenly burst.... In January, 2009, Nortel filed for bankruptcy protection.... 

"Nortel’s financial troubles were well documented, but what didn’t become public until years later was espionage traced back to China....

"Michel Juneau-Katsuya was head of the CSIS Asia-Pacific desk in the late 1990s when the service became aware of 'spying activities the Chinese were conducting' against Nortel.... When the intelligence agency warned the company, it all but ignored CSIS. This led Juneau-Katsuya to a startling conclusion: 'To this day, I believe there might have been one or more agents of influence controlled by the Chinese in [Nortel] which succeeded in neutralizing our warning.'

"A little later, around 2000,...  [at] a Nortel facility in Texas, Huawei returned a fibre card ... and asked for a refund, recalls Lawrence Bill, a forensic analyst who worked on the subsequent investigation.... [W] hen Nortel engineers looked closely, they realized the 'bleeding-edge' gear had been disassembled and reverse engineered, says Bill.... Meanwhile, the company started noticing knock-off versions of some of its products in Asian markets, he says. Nortel considered suing, but dropped the matter after the Huawei office across the road in Texas closed down....

"[I]n the spring of 2004 ... a Nortel employee in the U.K. noticed some documents he’d stored in the company’s 'LiveLink' database had been downloaded by a senior executive in Canada. The Brit helpfully emailed the manager — optical-networks president Brian McFadden — to say he was available to answer any questions McFadden might have about the material. The executive’s response? I have no idea what you’re talking about. Nortel’s security staff in Raleigh, N.C., were promptly alerted.

"Larry Bill, based in Raleigh, noticed a troubling fact: Logs indicated that McFadden had signed into the Nortel system from multiple locations around the world, places he had never visited.... Security advisor Brian Shields discovered that not one, but seven Nortel executives, including CEO Frank Dunn, had been hacked, and that the hackers were vacuuming an alarming volume of sensitive material out of its databases.

"By the end of his investigation, Shields says he was able to track the theft of over 1,400 documents from the LiveLink server, and that was only during a six-month period when bosses allowed him to monitor the stealing. He found evidence the break-in of Nortel’s internal computer network had started no later than 2000, and probably began in the 1990s. He says it lasted past 2009, when he was laid off. He traced most of the hacks back to IP addresses and four Internet service providers (ISPs) in China. When material was actually downloaded from Nortel, it mostly ended up at an ISP in Shanghai....

"He cites a 2013 report by cyber-security firm Mandiant, which revealed the existence of a major Internet-espionage organization in Shanghai, likely “Unit 61398” of the People’s Liberation Army. Mandiant tracked thefts of data from 141 companies in 20 major industries.... 

"Shields, who was Nortel’s representative on the Network Security Information Exchange, a U.S. government initiative to help protect the national telecom infrastructure ... has no evidence of who ultimately received the documents, but notes that only a Nortel competitor would benefit from the information, helping it develop products, craft sales pitches and out-sell rivals.  Shields cannot prove that Huawei benefited from the hacking, but is convinced that its rise to a world telecommunications superpower — as Nortel simultaneously withered away — is no coincidence.... And yet he is certain the Nortel CEO never saw that report. His investigation wound down after a few months, and it appears no one notified firms that later bought Nortel assets that its computers might be infected.

"CSIS got in touch again early in 2009, offering to help Nortel with the hacks, Shields says, but by then it was too late. Within a week, the company had filed for bankruptcy protection.... A few years later, as the National Defence Department prepared to take over Nortel’s former research campus in Ottawa, it discovered evidence of another type of spying — old-school listening bugs implanted in the building during Nortel days, a senior Defence officer told the Ottawa Citizen and Globe and Mail."

Read more: https://www.intelligencer.ca/news/exclusive-did-huawei-bring-down-nortel-corporate-espionage-theft-and-the-parallel-rise-and-fall-of-two-telecom-giants/wcm/543c8eee-d7d0-4b8a-89e9-09c3b9c92b4a

MB biotech firm fast tracks coronavirus treatment

Winnipeg biotech company says COVID-19 treatment nearing production | Global News - Skylar Peters

March 22, 2020 - "A Winnipeg company is working on a way to treat those who have become ill with COVID-19. Emergent Biosolutions is developing experimental treatments for the illness caused by the novel coronavirus. At the same time, it has partnered with two American pharmaceutical companies to work on a vaccine for COVID-19.... Emergent has teamed up with clinical-stage vaccine company Novavax as well as biotech company Vaxart to develop two oral vaccines.

"As senior vice president of therapeutics Dr. Laura Saward tells 680 CJOB, the company has a bit of a head start. 'We started right away, looking across our different platforms for how we could have an impact, and of course everyone is doing this quickly,' Saward says. 'We looked at some of our proven technologies – platforms that have supported several licensed drugs, and we put those to work on coronavirus.'

"Saward explains while many researchers are focused on a vaccine that would make someone immune to COVID-19, they’re focused on therapeutics for those who would have already contracted the illness. 'When you use a vaccine, you’re developing antibodies over time. This is a way to give someone a dose of these antibodies right away, and that would help to remove the infection or the virus from their system,' Saward says. 'It’s an approach we’ve used with many other infectious diseases where you isolate these antibodies from plasma sources. There’s hundreds of years of research behind this type of approach. It does take some of the risk out, and our focus is on going as fast as possible.'

"Winnipeg epidemiologist Dr. Cynthia Carr tells 680 CJOB while any vaccine could still be over a year away, it’s important to remember we might not get one at all, as none of the previous seven strains of the coronavirus has had a vaccine, so developing treatment is equally important....

"Saward explains her group is making great progress.... 'We will work with regulators to ensure we’re doing this in a way that’s safe — but our target is to get in the clinic by the end of summer. We will be manufacturing at our Winnipeg site by the beginning of summer.'"

[Statistics appended to the article report 1,510 cases of coronavirus in Canada, of which 20 people have died and 18 were pronounced recovered - gd.]

Read more: https://globalnews.ca/news/6716475/winnipeg-researchers-covid-19-treatment/

How the Bitcoin Protocol 'changes everything'

How To Understand Bitcoin If You're Over 40 - Matt Hougan, Forbes:

August 15, 2019 - "Those of us who are over 40 can remember a time when the internet stunk: When you had to look up websites in a (printed) book; when email didn’t exist; when you couldn’t do much with the internet except send files ... using something called 'FTP' [or] 'file transfer protocol.'  'Protocol' is a fancy word that means a set of insructions for how to transfer information across the internet....

"In 1982, researchers developed ... the Simple Mail Transmission Protocol, or SMTP. SMTP allowed us to send email over the internet.... In 1989, we took another big step forward with the creation of Hypertext Transfer Protocol, or HTTP. HTTP lets us send webpages with linked text (or 'hyperlinks'). It gave rise to the World Wide Web.

"In 1994, the Secure Sockets Layer protocol was created, better known as SSL. SSL allows us to securely enter sensitive information into the internet, like personal or credit card information. Not coincidentally, Amazon was founded later that year.... Voice Over Internet Protocol, or VOIP, created 1995, changed telecom forever; Real-Time Streaming Protocol, or RTSP, created in 1996, helped enable streaming video. And so on. From a distance, each of these advances seemed unprecedented. But in reality, they were just the next logical thing: a new protocol that expanded the way the internet can be used.

"The right way to think of bitcoin, crypto, and public blockchains is as the next step in this evolution. Just instead of sending files or email or voice or credit card data, bitcoin and crypto let us send money. Of course, there have been online banks and payment services for decades. But they’ve always been hybrids or bridges: A bank like Wells Fargo or a service provider like PayPal might put up a digital veneer, but it would actually extract each transaction and process it in the traditional, physical world....

"The Bitcoin Protocol’s breakthrough – the reason 'it changes everything' – is that it lets you send money over the internet natively, without a bank or a service provider in the middle.... If you want to wire $10 million to someone in another country today, for instance, it takes three-to-five days, they can deny your wire for any reason or create limits, and the fees are significant. With bitcoin, it takes about 10 minutes, it’s open 24/7, and is essentially free.... Instead of using lawyers and investment bankers, you can create any contract or trust or entity or set of financial instructions … for free.... That means disrupting services like escrow, debt issuance, derivatives, trust creation, fundraising, and more....

"[T]o move money around the world instantly on the Bitcoin blockchain, or to replace your investment bankers with the Ethereum blockchain – you have to own and use bitcoin or ether.... A lot of smart investors are buying up bitcoin and ether today, before everyone else figures out how valuable these new technologies can be....

"[E]very major new internet protocol has disrupted a major industry:

• SMTP created email and disrupted the Post Office;
• HTTP created the web and disrupted media and advertising;
• SSL created internet commerce and disrupted retail;
• RTSP created streaming and disrupted the entertainment industry.

"By allowing money to travel over the internet, Bitcoin and crypto will disrupt the financial industry just as surely as Amazon disrupted Sears."

Read more: https://www.forbes.com/sites/matthougan/2019/08/15/how-to-understand-bitcoin-if-youre-over-40/#3eafc04b47a5

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Cyberattacks use National Security Agency tech.

In Baltimore and Beyond, a Stolen N.S.A. Tool Wreaks Havoc - The New York Times - Nicole Perlroth & Scott Shane:

May 25, 2019 - "For nearly three weeks, Baltimore has struggled with a cyberattack by digital extortionists that has frozen thousands of computers, shut down email and disrupted real estate sales, water bills, health alerts and many other services. But here is what frustrated city employees and residents do not know: A key component of the malware that cybercriminals used in the attack was developed at taxpayer expense a short drive down the Baltimore-Washington Parkway at the National Security Agency, according to security experts briefed on the case.

"Since 2017, when the N.S.A. lost control of the tool, EternalBlue, it has been picked up by state hackers in North Korea, Russia and, more recently, China, to cut a path of destruction around the world, leaving billions of dollars in damage. But over the past year, the cyberweapon has boomeranged back and is now showing up in the N.S.A.’s own backyard. It is not just in Baltimore. Security experts say EternalBlue attacks have reached a high, and cybercriminals are zeroing in on vulnerable American towns and cities, from Pennsylvania to Texas, paralyzing local governments and driving up costs.

"The N.S.A. ... has refused to discuss or even acknowledge the loss of its cyberweapon, dumped online in April 2017 by a still-unidentified group calling itself the Shadow Brokers.... Thomas Rid, a cybersecurity expert at Johns Hopkins University, called the Shadow Brokers episode 'the most destructive and costly N.S.A. breach in history,' more damaging than the better-known leak in 2013 from Edward Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor....

"Before it leaked, EternalBlue was one of the most useful exploits in the N.S.A.’s cyberarsenal. According to three former N.S.A. operators who spoke on the condition of anonymity, analysts spent almost a year finding a flaw in Microsoft’s software and writing the code to target it. Initially, they referred to it as EternalBluescreen because it often crashed computers — a risk that could tip off their targets. But it went on to become a reliable tool used in countless intelligence-gathering and counterterrorism missions....

"North Korea was the first nation to co-opt the tool, for an attack in 2017 ... that paralyzed the British health care system, German railroads and some 200,000 organizations around the world. Next was Russia, which used the weapon in an attack ... aimed at Ukraine but spread across major companies doing business in the country.... In the past year, the same Russian hackers who targeted the 2016 American presidential election used EternalBlue to compromise hotel Wi-Fi networks. Iranian hackers have used it to spread ransomware and hack airlines in the Middle East....

"One month before the Shadow Brokers began dumping the agency’s tools online in 2017, the N.S.A. — aware of the breach — reached out to Microsoft and other tech companies to inform them of their software flaws. Microsoft released a patch, but hundreds of thousands of computers worldwide remain unprotected."

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/25/us/nsa-hacking-tool-baltimore.html
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Why the Green New Deal can't work

Why the Green New Deal won't work - John Sexton, Hot Air:

February 14, 2019 - "The Green New Deal isn’t a bill, it’s just a resolution.... But even if ... the GND took on the full force of law ... it won’t save the planet. It can’t possibly do so because, as Megan McArdle points out ... at the Washington Post, America isn’t the planet. In fact, we’re not even a terribly significant portion of the carbon emissions being released into the atmosphere at this point.

Today, the United States accounts for 4.3 percent of the world’s population, roughly 25 percent of its economic output and 15 percent of its carbon emissions from fuel combustion. Meanwhile China, with 18 percent of the world’s population, has 15 percent of its gross domestic product and 28 percent of its emissions. And India, with a population almost as big as China’s, produces only about 3 percent of global GDP and 6 percent of emissions....

Looking at these three countries brings the scale of the problem into focus. There is a small, rich world that lives in comfort and plenty, and a much larger, poor one that wants to get rich. To do so, those billions of people will pass through an intermediate stage when their developing industries are much dirtier than their highly regulated rich-world counterparts. The global emissions problem is likely to get much worse before it gets any better…

No matter what rich-world economies do about their energy consumption, or what “moral leadership” they exert, people in the non-rich world are going to want to drive cars instead of walking; to wash their clothes in machines instead of in a river; to cool their houses with air-conditioning; to eat meat every day — in other words, to do and own all the things that make modern rich-world lives so safe and pleasant....

"McArdle is undeniably correct that poorer countries are not going to abandon their chance at a better future based on cheap reliable fossil fuels simply because the U.S. is doing it. They are going to take the fastest route to a better life no matter how green America gets.... The Green New Deal can’t work because, at best, it can only address a tiny fraction of the global problem....

"In reality, there’s only one way America can change the ball game: By doing the hard work to actually make green energy the shortest, quickest path to prosperity. You don’t need a cap and trade system if solar panels are 35% efficient and cheap to manufacture. You don’t have to twist arms in China or India if fusion is a workable, safe alternative to fission. So McArdle argues that if you want a greener, cleaner planet, the solution is not a WWII style mobilization toward efficiency here, but developing green technology that everyone in the world will eagerly adopt because it’s obviously better than any fossil fuel alternative.

"I think McArdle is basically right about why the Green New Deal won’t work... However, like many other commentators who’ve looked at the GND, she treats the social justice wishlist it contains as tangential to the real goal. I continue to think this is a mistake....

"[Alexandria] Ocasio-Cortez believes the real source of the problem isn’t fossil fuels per se, it’s capitalism. That’s the system she ultimately wants to eliminate and that’s why all the extra stuff in the GND, such as job guarantees for everyone, makes perfect sense. AOC wants a greener future as a means to achieve a redder one. For her purposes, the GND will be a success if America is less capitalist and more socialist, whether or not the rest of the world goes green."

Read more: https://hotair.com/archives/2019/02/14/green-new-deal-wont-work/
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How WikiLeaks revolutionized journalism

WikiLeaks designed 21st century model for leak-based journalism in a wired age | The Japan Times:

April 12, 2019 - "Using cryptography and virtual drop boxes, Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks created a revolutionary new model for media to lure massive leaks from whistleblowers, exposing everything from U.S. military secrets to wealthy tax dodgers’ illicit offshore accounts.

"Assange’s arrest in London Thursday on a U.S. extradition request to face computer crime charges could spell the end of 13-year-old WikiLeaks. But his legacy will live long in the world’s media. News outlets and journalists everywhere can now offer potential sources encrypted apps and secure virtual mailboxes to receive secrets that were once divulged by discreet whispers, furtive phone calls and unmarked manila envelopes.

"Skilled at hacking and cryptography — and motivated by a deep distrust of traditional institutions — Australia-born Assange applied his libertarian streak to the challenge of breaking government secrecy. In 2006 he built an online platform that offered an anonymous, encrypted path for leaking computerized files without fear of exposure. Leaks have forever been crucial currency in journalism. But no one had before created a convenient, relatively easy-to-use electronic drop box that could almost instantly, with absolute secrecy, take delivery of gigabytes of documents. And he did it at a ripe time, when the wired world was emerging and social media were taking off....

"WikiLeaks obtained documents exposing the Kenyan leader’s corruption, the secret operating rules for the U.S. Guantanamo Bay prison camp, and offshore banking records from a Swiss bank. It began scooping mainstream media on stories ranging from secret climate-change discussions to Iran’s nuclear activities and Icelandic banking fraud.

"In 2010, U.S. Army intelligence official Chelsea Manning ... began secretly feeding hundreds of thousands of classified files to WikiLeaks. They showed evidence of possible war crimes by U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.... Assange partnered with The New York Times, The Guardian, Der Spiegel and others to help sort through and make sense of the Manning material. WikiLeaks won awards and Assange was put on the cover of Time magazine....

"Almost as soon as he hit that peak, Assange’s star began to fade.... But by 2012 others were already adopting his model of setting up encrypted, anonymous paths for leakers to contribute documents. WikiLeaks copycat sites opened in different countries. Journalists became trained in the use of encryption and secret file transfers.... U.S. whistleblower Edward Snowden ... used the encrypted communications Assange helped popularize to communicate with the journalists who collaborated with him.

"In 2013 the Freedom of the Press Foundation, which had aided WikiLeaks with financing, developed a new anonymous drop box free for anyone to use: SecureDrop.... SecureDrop is important to the most successful WikiLeaks-like operation, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. In recent years it has obtained from leakers millions of financial account files detailing money laundering and tax avoidance from offshore banking centers — digital troves that became known as the 'Panama Papers' and 'Paradise Papers.'”

Read more: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/04/12/world/wikileaks-designed-21st-century-model-leak-based-journalism-wired-age/#.XLNUNtQrLn4
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World's 1st seastead home launched in Thailand

Couple Uses Bitcoin Wealth to Build World's First "Seastead" | NewsBTC - Rick D.:

March 1, 2019 - "An early Bitcoin investor and self-confessed libertarian has built the first 'seastead' with his BTC profits. For those who do not know, a seastead is a floating home designed to stay in international waters, thus allowing its inhabitants to live outside of the laws of any nation....

"Chad Elwartowski and Nadia Summergirl have become the first two reported individuals to permanently cast of the shackles of land and the laws enforced on it in favour of a life on the open sea. The pair have built the first seastead with help from Ocean Builders, a start-up dedicated to helping individuals move their lives to the ocean.

"The couple have financed the building of their floating home using money made from early Bitcoin investments. The structure cost them around $150,000, ... $30,000 more than they originally budgeted for. It measures six metres square and is octagonal in shape. The pair’s new home is spread across two floors.

"According to a report in Reason, Elwartowski had previously explored other avenues to satisfy his cravings for a truly free life. These included ​'Free State Project, Libertarian Party elections, and the Ron Paul campaign'....

"Summergirl is equally passionate about the idea. She says she was sick of hearing people talking about the concept of building floating communities whilst no one was actually going through with it. The Thai-born woman was also happy that the first project of its kind was happening close to where she grew up....

"Elwartowski and Summergirl’s new home has been out at sea since early February. The pair say they are continuing to commute back and forth to land for now though. They still have various commitments that need tying up before they hit the open waves for good. A recently purchased commuter boat should help them speed up their permanent relocation, however.

"Elwartowski states that the couple has made no effort to seek approval from the Thai government for their new home. He commented:

“'We have been keeping under the radar so far, but we follow all the laws of Thailand so it’s as if we’re just living on a boat in the water as far as they’re concerned.... All we expect from the Thai government is that they follow international law. We will be doing the same. But Nadia and I aren’t doing anything we can’t do on land.'”

Read more: https://www.newsbtc.com/2019/03/01/bitcoin-seastead/
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Huawei sues over U.S. ban on its products

Huawei sues US over government ban on its products | World news | The Guardian - Lily Kuo:

March 7, 2019 - ""Huawei is suing the US over a government ban on its products.... In a statement on Thursday, the Chinese telecoms equipment and smartphone manufacturer said it had filed a lawsuit in the US district court in Plano, Texas, home to the company’s US headquarters, calling for the ban on US government agencies buying Huawei equipment or services to be overturned.

"'This ban not only is unlawful, but also restricts Huawei from engaging in fair competition, ultimately harming US consumers. We look forward to the court’s verdict, and trust that it will benefit both Huawei and the American people,' said Guo Ping, Huawei’s chairman.

"The ban, a provision of the National Defence Authorisation Act signed by Donald Trump in August, also prevents government agencies using third-party contractors who use Huawei products. Huawei alleges it amounts to a 'bill of attainder', a legislative act forbidden under the US constitution in which an individual or group is declared guilty of a crime without trial."
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/07/huawei-sues-us-over-government-ban-on-its-products

Huawei is Defending Libertarian Economic Principles in The Heart of America - Eurasia Future - Adam Garrie:

March 7, 2019 - "While it may be well over a year before the ... verdict ... Huawei has already won in the court of common sense. The US Constitution guarantees one’s basic freedom to engage in commerce without facing arbitrary governmental restrictions and burdensome regulations. These basic principles which are fundamental to the US Constitution, tend to be classed as economic libertarianism.

"Libertarianism can be defined as a political philosophy that stresses the necessity of little to no governmental interference in the lives of individuals and the businesses they operate. As such, there is a particular emphasis on free markets, free trade and freedom of choice for entrepreneurs, business owners and consumers, within the libertarian political philosophy....

"Although the US Constitution specifically enshrines these values into law, ... American politicians in both major parties ... often argue for less economic liberty, less freedom of choice and for more creativity stifling regulation.... Ron Paul and his son Senator Rand Paul continue to fly the flag of libertarian principles [but] for the rest of America’s political and media class, big government regulation is very much the rule ... both in respect of Donald Trump’s opposition to free trade and ... Democrats who argue for monstrously bloated (to the point of being ridiculous) initiatives such as the so-called 'green new deal'....

"[T]he Huawei lawsuit ought to open up the hearts and minds of average Americans who have allowed themselves to be bamboozled by fear.... Huawei is defending the liberty of ordinary Americans, more so than most American politicians."

Read more: https://eurasiafuture.com/2019/03/07/huawei-is-defending-libertarian-economic-principles-in-the-heart-of-america/

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Greenhouse gas from livestock cut by over half in pilot study

Seaweed could make cows burp less methane and cut their carbon hoofprint - MIT Technology Review - James Temple:

November 23, 2018 - "In a wooden barn on the edge of campus at the University of California, Davis, ... Holstein dairy cows participated in a study to test a promising path to reducing methane emissions from livestock, a huge source of the greenhouse gases driving climate change. By adding a small amount of seaweed to the animals’ feed, researchers found, they could cut the cows’ methane production by nearly 60%.

"Each year, livestock production pumps out greenhouse gases with the equivalent warming effect of more than 7 gigatons of carbon dioxide, roughly the same global impact as the transportation industry. Nearly 40% of that is produced during digestion: cattle, goats, and sheep belch and pass methane, a highly potent, albeit relatively short-lived, greenhouse gas.

"If the reductions achieved in the UC Davis study could be applied across the worldwide livestock industry, it would eliminate nearly 2 gigatons of those emissions annually — about a quarter of United States’ total climate pollution.... Ermias Kebreab, an animal science professor at UC Davis who leads the work, is preparing to undertake a more ambitious study....

"In 2014, Australian researchers found that low doses of a red algae known as Asparagopsis taxiformis virtually eliminated methane production in lab experiments. Field trials with live sheep cut emissions as much as 80%, while the UC Davis experiment, the first on live cattle, showed a 58% reduction on average when a related seaweed made up 1% of their diet....

"Australis Aquaculture, a producer of ocean-farmed Asian sea bass based in Greenfield, Massachusetts, is attempting ... through a research project in Vietnam, dubbed Greener Grazing ... to grow seaweed off the coast of Vietnam. The plants would be placed within the type of plastic tube netting used to grow oysters, and suspended a few feet underwater — just deep enough to be protected from waves, but close enough to the sun for photosynthesis to drive growth.

"Meanwhile, DSM, the giant Dutch conglomerate, is working on a synthetic additive for the cows. A paper its researchers coauthored found that a methane inhibitor known as 3-nitrooxypropanol, or 3NOP, cut emissions by 30% in lactating Holsteins ... milk production wasn’t affected during the 12-week experiment, and as a bonus, the “spared methane energy” helped generate tissue, resulting in higher body weights. DSM Nutritional Products ... has already applied for US Food and Drug Administration approval to sell it in the United States."

Read more: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612452/how-seaweed-could-shrink-livestocks-global-carbon-hoofprint/
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Carbon extraction becoming commercially viable

Sucking carbon dioxide from air is cheaper than scientists thought - Jeff Tollefson, Nature:

June 7, 2018 - "Siphoning carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere could be more than an expensive last-ditch strategy for averting climate catastrophe. A detailed economic analysis published on 7 June suggests that the geoengineering technology is inching closer to commercial viability.

"The study, in Joule, was written by researchers at Carbon Engineering in Calgary, Canada, which has been operating a pilot CO2-extraction plant in British Columbia since 2015. That plant — based on a concept called direct air capture — provided the basis for the economic analysis, which includes cost estimates from commercial vendors of all of the major components. Depending on a variety of design options and economic assumptions, the cost of pulling a tonne of CO2 from the atmosphere ranges between US$94 and $232. The last comprehensive analysis of the technology, conducted by the American Physical Society in 2011, estimated that it would cost $600 per tonne.....

"'We’re really trying to commercialize direct air capture in a serious way, and to do that, you have to have everybody in the supply chain on board,' says David Keith, acting chief scientist at Carbon Engineering and a climate physicist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

"Founded in 2009, Carbon Engineering is one of a few companies pursuing direct air capture technologies. One competitor, Climeworks in Zurich, Switzerland, opened a commercial facility last year that can capture 900 tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere each year for use in greenhouses. Climeworks has also opened a second facility in Iceland that can capture 50 tonnes of CO2 a year and bury it in underground basalt formations.

"Climeworks says that capturing a tonne of CO2 at its Swiss plant costs about $600. Company officials expect the figure to dip below $100 per tonne in 5-10 years as operations ramp up. In the meantime, Carbon Engineering’s paper provides the most detailed look yet at the cost of such technology....

"In the end, the economics of CO2 extraction will depend on factors that vary by location, including the price of energy and whether or not a company can access government subsidies. But the cost per tonne is still likely to remain above the market price of carbon for the foreseeable future.... But CO2-extraction technology could gain a foothold in markets where the CO2 can be sold at a premium, or converted into a useful product like fuel....

"Carbon Engineering hopes to build a small facility that can produce 200 barrels of fuel per day by 2021, and then a commercial plant that can produce 2,000 barrels per day. 'This is completely doable industrial technology,' [Keith] says. 'We just need to begin, set up markets and see what happens.'”

Read more: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05357-w
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3D-printed gun software posted on internet

Cody Wilson Takes Gun Plans Offline After Judge Issues Restraining Order - Hit & Run : Reason.com - Declan McCullagh:

August 1, 2018 - ""A few hours after U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik, a Clinton appointee, muzzled Defense Distributed with a court order Tuesday evening, the CodeIsFreeSpeech.com mirror site appeared. It's a project of the Calguns Foundation, the Firearms Policy Coalition, and other civil rights groups, and includes freely downloadable computer-aided design (CAD) files for the AR-15, AR-10, Ruger 10-22, Beretta 92FS, and other firearms.

"Soon after the court order, Defense Distributed founder Cody Wilson announced that his site, DEFCAD.com, was 'going dark'.... But the court order does not apply to the advocacy groups behind CodeIsFreeSpeech. They were not named as defendants in the lawsuit brought by the Washington state attorney general. Therefore, they don't need to comply with the ruling....

''We, and many others around the country, completely support Cody and Defense Distributed,' Brandon Combs, president of the Firearms Policy Coalition, tells Reason. 'Some governments and elected officials might want to censor this speech because they prefer a police state. We don't'....

"Absent from Lasnik's 7-page ruling is any consideration of the First Amendment implications of censoring information about building firearms. This has been legal since before the United States was founded....

"DEFCAD.com's files are not only being mirrored at CodeIsFreeSpeech — they or something like them are also available on innumerable other sites.....  Look for Defense Distributed's attorneys to argue that this is yet another reason the temporary restraining order should be dissolved. A hearing is scheduled for August 10 in Seattle....

"[T]he Seattle lawsuit is one of a flurry of warning letters and legal challenges from anti-gun states aimed at forcing Defense Distributed not to publish its files. The company recently won the ability to publish after reaching a settlement with the Justice Department in its lawsuit claiming that restrictions on sharing firearm code violate the First Amendment — a clear echo of earlier litigation over encryption code nearly a generation ago."

Read more: https://reason.com/blog/2018/08/01/breaking-cody-wilson-takes-gun-plans-off
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3D printing creates a home in a day for $4,000 (video)

Startup to make 3D-printed concrete homes for US$4,000 | CTV News:

April 3, 2018 - "A non-profit partnership is raising money to 3D-print durable and affordable concrete homes in El Salvador, in an effort to offset the global housing crisis. Each single-storey, 650 square-foot home costs US$4,000 to build using a concrete-extruding printing apparatus, which is programmed to create the foundation and walls of the structure....

"Icon co-founder Jason Ballard says 3D-printing ... allows for faster, better and cheaper projects to be completed with much more creativity.... He says printing with the liquid concrete makes all manner of shapes possible, from traditional squares and rectangles to circular and spiral shapes. It also simplifies construction by eliminating the need for drywall, wood framing, insulation and other materials used to build the walls in traditional homes....

"Ballard and Icon partnered with the non-profit group New Story to launch their housing initiative, which is made possible by their concrete-printing apparatus, dubbed the Vulcan. The first home printed by the Vulcan I was built in Austin, Texas, with the 350 square-foot structure taking approximately 48 hours and costing $10,000 to complete. But Icon says its next printer, the Vulcan II, will be able to hit its lofty goal of building a 650 square-foot home for $4,000 in less than a day.

"Icon intends to put the plans for its concrete home up online, so others can use it once the technology becomes more widespread.... The New Story charity is currently accepting sponsors to build homes at a cost of $4,000 per house, with the cost of building a full community tagged at $400,000.“

Read more: https://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/startup-to-make-3d-printed-concrete-homes-for-us-4-000-1.3869268
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Warrant needed for cell location info, SCOTUS rules

Carpenter v. United States Decision Strengthens Digital Privacy | WIRED - Louise Matsakis:

June 22, 2018 - "In a highly anticipated decision released [June 22], the US Supreme Court ... decided in Carpenter v. United States that the government generally needs a warrant in order to access cell site location information [CSLI], which is automatically generated whenever a mobile phone connects to a cell tower and is stored by wireless carriers for years....

"'We decline to grant the state unrestricted access to a wireless carrier’s database of physical location information,' Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion. 'In light of the deeply revealing nature of CSLI, its depth, breadth, and comprehensive reach, and the inescapable and automatic nature of its collection, the fact that such information is gathered by a third party does not make it any less deserving of Fourth Amendment protection.'

"Roberts was joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan. Justices Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch dissented....

"At issue was an antiquated legal principle called the third-party doctrine, which ... comes from United States v. Miller, a 1976 case in which the court ruled that law enforcement doesn't need a warrant in order to access bank records because 'the Fourth Amendment does not prohibit the obtaining of information revealed to a third party.' Three years later, in 1979, the court ruled ... that the third-party doctrine also extends to call records collected by phone companies.

"But on Friday, the Supreme Court said that cell site location information is a 'qualitatively different category” of information. CSLI allows law enforcement to paint a nearly complete picture of Americans' movements. Last year, AT&T and Verizon jointly received nearly 125,000 requests from law enforcement for CSLI data, according to their transparency reports. Law enforcement officials will now only be able to make such requests after obtaining a warrant, which will require them to demonstrate probable cause....

"The court declined to decide on whether law enforcement seeking a smaller window of records — fewer than seven days ... constitutes a Fourth Amendment search. The opinion also allows for exceptions for emergencies, like 'bomb threats, active shootings, and child abductions.'

"Carpenter v. United States began in December of 2010, when a series of robberies hit Michigan and neighboring Ohio.... Timothy Carpenter, who was later convicted of committing several of the robberies and sentenced to 116 years in prison ... argued that obtaining the records constituted a Fourth Amendment search, and therefore the police should have needed a warrant. His motion was denied, and the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals later upheld the case. The Supreme Court agreed to hear it last year....

"Fourteen of the largest US tech companies — including Google, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft — filed a brief in support of updating the Fourth Amendment for the digital era. It was technically not filed in support of either party, but largely backed Carpenter's position. The cohort even included Verizon, which cooperated with the National Security Agency as part of its broad bulk surveillance programs for years."

Read more: https://www.wired.com/story/carpenter-v-united-states-supreme-court-digital-privacy/
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Ghost Gunner enables home gun manufacturing

Guns, Code, and Freedom - Reason.com - Mark McDaniel:

April 2018 - "Cody Wilson ... a crypto-anarchist and serial troublemaker, launched the age of the digital gun in 2013 when he published files showing how to make the Liberator, a 3D-printed pistol. It set off a panic in the media and in anti-gun political circles.

"By late 2014, his company, Defense Distributed, had raised enough capital to begin manufacturing the Ghost Gunner, a miniature computer numerical control (CNC) mill designed to take an '80 percent lower' for an AR-15 and turn it into a legal, untraceable, fully functioning metal firearm.... A lower receiver is the part generally considered by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) to be the 'firearm,' whether other components are present or not.....

"So-called 80 percent lowers (or ''80 percent frames') are ... only four-fifths complete. As a result, they're not firearms in a legal sense. Anyone can purchase an 80 percent lower and then use his own tools to do the remaining mill work, turning the object into a working weapon. It is perfectly licit in the U.S. to make a gun this way; outside of California, it does not need to be registered or serialized.

"For four years, Wilson has been embroiled in a legal battle over his work [with]  the State Department. Shortly after publication of the Liberator instructions, the agency forced Defense Distributed to remove those files from its website, citing violations of the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR).

"In 2015, joined by the Second Amendment Foundation and the legendary attorney Alan Gura, Wilson challenged the State Department's order on First, Second, and Fifth Amendment grounds. They later petitioned the Supreme Court for a temporary injunction that would null the take-down order until their lawsuit is resolved. In January, the high court declined to hear the case, sending it back to a lower court in Texas....

"Despite the ongoing legal skirmishing, Defense Distributed in late 2017 released new files allowing the Ghost Gunner to mill handgun frames in addition to rifles. In December, Reason's Mark McDaniel spoke with Wilson about the future of gun control, how a weapon can be speech, and where Western liberal decadence is taking us."

Read interview here: https://reason.com/archives/2018/03/03/guns-code-and-freedom
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MIT grads build reactor that uses nuclear waste

Can Reusing Spent Nuclear Fuel Solve Our Energy Problems? - Gary Strauss, National Geographic:

September 19, 2016 - "Nuclear ... engineer Leslie Dewan believes that a safe, environmentally friendly, next-generation nuclear reactor isn’t just feasible — it's commercially viable.

"As cofounder and CEO of Boston-based startup Transatomic Power, Dewan and fellow Massachusetts Institute of Technology grad Mark Massie are working on commercial-scale development of a molten salt reactor first prototyped in the 1960s at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

"'“We’ve changed the design to make it more compact, power dense, and able to run on spent nuclear fuel,' says the 31-year-old Dewan, a National Geographic Emerging Explorer....

"Unlike most traditional nuclear reactors that use water as a coolant and are fueled by solid uranium pellets, molten salt reactors [are] fueled by uranium dissolved in liquid salt, consuming fuel more slowly and efficiently.

 "Transatomic's reactor is also designed to automatically shut down during a power outage, with fuel draining into an escape tank and freezing solid, avoiding the kind of meltdown that has made more traditional nuclear power plant development abhorrent to power companies, alternative-energy proponets, environmentalists, and policymakers, many of whom remain alarmed by the prospect of more nuclear power.

 "Transatomic ... offers a solution to the problem of where to store spent nuclear fuel, which has long vexed scientists. Typical nuclear reactors consume only a fraction of the energy in their uranium fuel, which has lead to vast amounts of spent radioactive fuel rods.

"Transatomic's molten salt reactors would use that spent waste.

"''The world’s stockpile of nuclear waste is about 300,000 metric tons, about a football field’s worth that’s two meters deep,' Dewan says. 'There’s a tremendous amount of energy that’s left. With that waste, a waste-consuming molten salt reactor could produce enough electrical energy to power the world for decades.'"

Read more: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/09/leslie-dewan-explorer-moments-nuclear-energy/
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Technology Trumps Politics

The Blockchain Matters More than the President | Foundation for Economic Education - Jeffrey A. Tucker:

January 19, 2017 - "After a wildly contentious election season, you might get the impression that the future of the country, if not the world, hinges on the quality and ideology of top-down leadership. That’s actually wrong. Very little was said during the entire election about digital technology; nothing ever came up concerning distributed ledgers and the remarkable invention of a fully private currency that lives on the Internet and works without third-party intermediaries....

"It’s a paradigmatic case of how the structure of technology in our time has flipped the traditional model of what makes societies tick and what drives history forward. As we are learning, presidents and parties come and go; what persists and what keeps advancing regardless of political trends are the tools we use to improve our lives....

"Bitcoin has matured beautifully since its release in 2009. It has long since moved past the incredulity stage, though apparently skeptics will always be with us. What we see now is the drive toward mass adoption and industry application in every area, from payment processing to enterprise-building to security titling and contracting....

"Bitcoin is a market-based money and payment system that operates on its own, without the need for regulators, central banks, or even financial intermediaries. It is not only a money and payment system, however; it is also a system for bundling, documenting, and trading immutable packets of any kind of information that can include contracts, property titles, or any other form of human agreement, regardless of geographic proximity. This means that the resulting currency and/or information system operates completely outside borders and outside the domain of the nation-state....

"And why does it matter? Everyone has his or her own opinion on this. My angle is monetary. If there can be a parallel currency to nationalized monies, developing in tandem, the world economy is granted a future beyond the current miasma. So many modern problems and horrors trace to government money: economic depressions, declining incomes, wars, government growth and debt, cultural destabilization, and so much more. Finding a solution to this problem, and a path for reform, is a priority for anyone who loves liberty....

"The Bitcoin system is being developed in the context of consensus from actual stakeholders and tested by market results. This is the right path forward. Whatever the results, they stand a much stronger chance of putting the world economy on a forward path than any legislation or executive order coming from any government or political party."

Read more: https://fee.org/articles/the-blockchain-matters-more-than-the-president/
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Ethereum, a censorship resistant 'world computer'

Ethereum Project Offers Censorship Resistant 'World Computer' for Developers - Breitbart - Tom Ciccotta :

January 3, 2017 - "The Ethereum Project, an open source platform developed by 22-year old programmer Vitalik Buterin, is seeking to build upon the blockchain technology established by Bitcoin by allowing developers to use the blockchain to build decentralized applications.

"The blockchain is a decentralized database where records and entries are virtually unchangeable. While Bitcoin utilizes blockchain technology to manage a currency, the Ethereum Project provides an open source environment where programmers can create applications on the blockchain.

"Tristan Winters, a reporter at ETHNews, the leading online Ethereum news site, explained to me the Ethereum project in layman’s terms: 'Ethereum is a "world computer." Instead of hosting apps on a server, you host them on the Ethereum blockchain and p2p network.... So the apps are censorship resistant and no one can shut them down'....

"Ethereum is driven by Ether, a cryptocurrency that acts as 'fuel' for the system. According to the project’s website, Ether is a necessary element that ensures that developers are writing quality applications ... (wasteful code costs more), and that the network remains healthy (people are compensated for their contributed resources).

"Because of the open source nature of Ethereum, it has almost limitless functions. Developers have proposed and began work on decentralized file storage systems, financial systems, and business management systems.

"Ethereum allows actors to create smart contracts, which are programs that run on the blockchain that can handle currency in a way that is unchangeable. Smart contracts can be used for a variety of business functions, such as the representation of shares, organizational voting, and fundraising.

"The decentralized nature of the Ethereum blockchain would allow for social networks that are truly resistant to censorship. Unlike Facebook or Twitter, a social network operating on Ethereum wouldn’t be accessed via centralized servers. Such a network would exist as a peer-to-peer network that lives on computers throughout the world. Because such a network would have no centralized body, censorship would be extremely difficult."

Read more: http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2017/01/03/ethereum-project-offers-censorship-resistant-world-computer-for-developers/
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Bitcoin goes retail in Portsmouth, New Hamphire

Making Bitcoin Real: Portsmouth, NH, Businesses Begin Accepting BTC - Joel Valenzuela, Cointelegraph:

August 26, 2016 - "Another establishment has begun accepting Bitcoin as payment in what is fast becoming one of the most Bitcoin-centric towns in the United States.

"Street, a posh restaurant featuring food inspired from around the globe, began accepting Bitcoin earlier this month. The integration came as a result of outreach by Steven Zeiler, a local software developer and Bitcoin evangelist, who has also succeeded in getting a local yoga studio he frequents to take Bitcoin.

"Matt Carano, owner of The Music Class (which also takes Bitcoin) and former owner of the Pão Cafe,  one of the first restaurants in New Hampshire to take Bitcoin ... appreciates the ability to use Bitcoin locally, not just through online transactions....

"According to Mike Vine, technology evangelist for the Blockchain-based content-sharing platform LBRY, New Hampshire’s vibrant Bitcoin scene can be traced back to the Free State Project involvement....

"The Free State Project hosts the Porcupine Freedom Festival, or PorcFest, a weeklong festival in a mountain campground with a heavy emphasis on Bitcoin and decentralized technology. Largely thanks to the efforts of the Free State Project movers, New Hampshire ranks as one of the world’s most Bitcoin-friendly places.

"A touristy, seaside town of only 20,000 residents in a mostly rural state with a low population, Portsmouth is an unlikely destination for a vibrant Bitcoin community. Yet, in addition to the above mentioned businesses, it is also home to several Blockchain startups.

"Vine also founded the Praxeum, a Portsmouth-based co-working and community space, with Carano. He sees New Hampshire as a future renowned hub of Blockchain and decentralized tech innovation....

"Arcade City, the Blockchain-based ride-sharing service with a new app slated for release on September 1st, was founded in Portsmouth, and owes its origin to the Free Uber campaign, which protested against the city’s ride-sharing regulations by Bitcoin-funded swarm activism."

Read more: https://cointelegraph.com/news/making-bitcoin-real-portsmouth-n-h-businesses-begin-accepting-btc
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