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5 Jul, 5 tweets, 2 min read
It's going to be fun when ransomware strikes a cryptocurrency. Some of the software this grift is built on is not at NASA avionics level of correctness, and there sure is a lot of money for the taking.
So-called "stablecoins" in particular (since they're backed with non-pretend assets) are just a progressive lottery for whoever can hack a cryptocurrency exchange or mining client fast enough.
The logical endpoint is to have smart ransomware contracts that live on yet another blockchain, to make it more difficult for authorities to shut down these attacks. And then metaransomware can attack that, recursively, until we reach full employment.
Putting it another way, because cryptocurrency can't be taken offline by definition, any cryptocurrency is automatically a bug bounty that is some fraction of that currency's total dollar value. (building on this excellent observation by @qrs )
What's particularly exciting about ransomwareing a cryptocurrency infrastructure is the potential to improve the conversion funnel on the payment step. It automates away the clunkiest part of the operation (the textfile that explains to victims how to send the ransom)

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6 Jul
Provoking China to waste enormous resources on a space station and giant military is a fantastic way to get them to burn money they might otherwise use to embarrass us with a green economy or higher standard of living. globaltimes.cn/page/202107/12…
I know that the giant military is supposed to be used to scare Taiwan, but the idea that after a 40 year hiatus the PLA is going to go from getting its ass kicked by Vietnam to pulling off Normandy II strikes me as a stretch.
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2 Jul
"The U.S. has asked Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan to take in about 9,000 Afghans who assisted with the American occupation." There are over 18,000 of these applicants, over 50,000 family members, and they deserve US green cards, not this weak shit. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
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Pinboard Profile picture
24 Jun
The best thing you can do to get through a checkpoint is to scale down this security theater, now in its 20th year of making us less free.
Someone needs to have the moral courage to restore the 9/11 status quo ante for passenger screening, or we'll be taking our shoes off and getting lotion confiscated down to the seventh generation.
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Pinboard Profile picture
23 Jun
I love that the vertical moon dildo is still the official landing plan. This configuration was rejected in the sixties because the moon is lumpy and standing a pencil on its end is not the stablest way to land, but now we have computers and Elon says it's okay.
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22 Jun
Congress is also about to send itself home on the first of a series of recesses, just like it did at the height of the pandemic. You can't blame everything on Republicans if our elected Democratic majority refuses to stay in D.C. and do the work.
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21 Jun
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