That's not fair. Obama's term isn't up (and he's probably not too far behind to pull out a victory in the category). Unfortunately, few people bother putting together (or recording) casualty counts for non-invading forces, so it's not easy to estimate and compare. You can say "oh, Obama's killed ~2k US troops, and Bush has killed ~5k," but that number borders on triviality compared to total death counts of US military intervention in the past 14 years, which are, on the low-end of various estimates, around a million, and on the high-end, in the high millions and possibly breaching 10,000,000. The wide ranges and lack of reliable sources means either could probably claim the Most Dead title.

Putin isn't anywhere close to those numbers.... maybe 100k on the high end since 2000 CE. He obviously isn't qualified to win the Nobel Peace Prize. So yes, keeping in mind kills by God vs Satan in the Bible, giving the Peace Prize to Putin is exactly like giving the Peace Prize to Satan.

I'd be more worried about large asteroids hitting the moon and nudging it toward us a bit. Nobody wants to live in a world where each ocean wave is practically a tsunami. Well - okay, I'm inland and well above-ground, so it'd be great for my property value, so...

Was pooping, reading about Nigerian wealth disparity, and... no, no, wait - it's not racist, just hear me out!


Assuming people begin regularly carrying around bitcoins in a wallet for daily expenditure, could an organization pop up which, say, represents all Bitcoin merchants in North America - or perhaps BitPay could handle this all centrally... Anyway, is it possible to create separate "specific-use-only" wallets you could store in, say, your phone or your Trezor, where funds could only be sent to specific whitelisted addresses? (the whitelisted addresses must be impossible to edit with only the "specific use only" wallet, though maybe it could take an auto-updated list from the merchant organization?)

The idea is that the coins in the wallet could only be sent to specific addresses -- legitimate merchants. If a thief demanded your bitcoins, he'd have to steal the entire physical wallet device and could only spend the coins at legitimate merchants. He could not simply transfer coins to his own wallet. If the hardware wallet were stolen, the police can easily put together a database of blacklisted addresses which are pushed to merchants (this could be very effective if bitcoin change could be forced to go into old addresses instead of generating new ones). This DOES NOT affect fungibility. Since this is a "specific use only" wallet derived from a full-access wallet, it would be assumed that the user has a full-access wallet still at home on his more-secure device. Therefor, when he goes home, he simply transfers coins to a new address of his which does not need to be whitelisted because he'll be on the full-access wallet (the thief could not do this just by having, say, his cell phone). He can do whatever he wants from the full-access wallet, maybe create a "specific-use-only" wallet for terrorism and drugs - Idunno - or he could maybe create gift cards, where perhaps you can only spend the coins at, say, Amazon. (Oh. Giftcards. Maybe there's another application in this idea.)

I'm having trouble explaining this because I don't have the slightest idea how it would be implemented, but seems fairly plausible and maybe beneficial. Figured was worth throwing out there before I forget it.

How would we prove a hack? Somebody saying so? Maybe Dorian tells the reporters over free breakfast that he didn't hack Satoshi's Ning account?

I guess it'd really suck to have a day full of 500 million worthless-coin for .0001LTC trades.

Simply having a few news outlets streaming live AV of Dorian standing outside (with tinfoil around his head to prevent mind executions!) while asking the "real" Satoshi to make a post would probably suffice. I feel like we're talking about some type of magic show at this point, though, trying to show "no tricks up my sleeve."

Lose the $666 price while all this is going on? Heresy!

That Satoshi is back (err -- I mean here, still) may be extremely bearish. "He" holds more than a couple coins. If he were made known, he's lost that reason to not cash out. There are a good few implications, and it'll probably be hashed out over the next few days, but it is significant price-related news.

And so our Lord Satoshi did descend from the Heavens to deliver unto his disciples a calm suggestion.
     Guys, I really don't think tax burden has exceeded the benefits of compliance.
     I think maybe some of you guys are over-reacting, and you won't really be screwed until the IRS catches up with you.
     Also, I want to firebomb the St. Patrick's Cathedral. Please send me your name, address, and pledge. #ponzi

I suppose "this" Satoshi Nakamoto is the equivalent of Bitcoin Jesus. We can now split Satoshism into a Jew and Christian division which will allow us all to become a legitimate 501(c)(3)! Praise the lord!

I've never been asked to handle escrow for a cryptocurrency exchange and I have no idea why when it's objectively the easiest kind of transaction to handle with escrow. They're not messy at all and you really don't need a proper purchase agreement. I don't charge a fee and that particular kind of transaction would take maybe three minutes total of my time, so wouldn't feel very bad at all if no tip were included.

The Doomsday Cult of the Doomsday Cult of Bitcoin

Don't store or transmit sensitive information on a device where hardware and software is designed 100% for convenience. Problem solved.

I'd be really surprised if WWIII broke out. It wouldn't be surprising if Russia finally claimed Ukraine as a formal satellite, but I really doubt anyone will war with Russia over it, especially not while the US is still in the cold season (snowing here). I'm quite tired of the cold, so it'll have to wait until July, at least, when I've forgotten how much I hate ice and cold. I absolutely refuse to be drafted to the coldest place I know to see a bunch of heavily-bundled lumberjack-lookin' folks shooting at me. The second the Russians offer some of their vodka rations to the enemy troops so they can warm up, that battle is done, and all enemies will immediately assimilate into Russian culture. No amount of army professionalism will stop that.

We're... getting..... there....... slowly. It's at the bottom of skyered's queue right now. 4 more weeks at most.

My mind would be totally blown if someone could solve that. To me, that's the equivalent of someone "walking" upside-down on the water by moving his hair as tens of thousands of tiny legs.

New:
*The Banner Saga - Interesting tactical turn-based with emphasis on story, and it's a good one. Fantastic artwork. Low replayability, awful end boss, story occasionally goes off on tangents (I'd guess to make the events in the sequel seem more fluid and meaningful), some mechanics were made to seem important but didn't meaningfully affect gameplay (will leave you to discover for yourself). http://stoicstudio.com/

*Diehard Dungeon (releasing on Steam this Wednesday, but already out elsewhere) - Yet another pixelated, 16-bit, real-time roguelike. This time, though, it's been developed and released by one guy, and is being praised for cramming a ton of content in. http://dieharddungeon.wordpress.com/ (that's right, .wordpress )


Upcoming & watching:
*Tower of Guns (tomorrow!) - Dev explains it well. http://www.towerofguns.com/


*Age of Wonders III (Q1-Q2 2014) - Unfamiliar with this franchise. Looks a lot like HOMM. www.ageofwonders.com

*Tropico 5 (Q2 2014) - explained previously. www.tropico5.com

*Galactic Civilizations 3 (no ETA, yet) - It's GalCiv.... 3! Moving to 64-bit only and promising everything to be much, much bigger. http://www.galciv3.com/


Other:
*Chris Sawyer has come back from the depths and is developing a minor reboot of Transport Tycoon. Unfortunately, it will only be for mobile devices. As part of Atari's bankruptcy (maybe EA will someday share its fate...!), Rollercoaster Tycoon franchise remains unbought IP. They're asking $3.5M.

*Walking Dead s2e2 coming out tomorrow, too. I think, like the first season, I'm going to skip them until the series is complete, then cram it into a couple days.

Avast or Avira are statistically your best bets for catching 0days, which is pretty much all you're going to see in the crypto community. According to Shadowserver's long-term testing, they'll catch right around 73-78% of new and tweaked malware. For the other quarter of the time, even with the best heuristic analysis tools, you're still screwed unless you browse and download very carefully.

ETA: The 73-78% only applies to "all" 0days... 0days you'll find in the crypto community may be more likely to pass through most AV heuristic analysis systems.

Does any currency have built-in consumer protections? In every case I can think of, it's just that companies hold funds. Since all online payments up to a few years ago were only permitted by centralized companies, they always put holds on the money. There's nothing preventing Bitpay, for example, from holding coins for 30 days and allowing buyers to do a chargeback within that period -- that's simply escrow. They can choose to be more like Paypal, where they have "loose" holds and permit receivers of money to redeem their balance more quickly, where Paypal often eats the losses and bans accounts and/or pulls money out of users' bank accounts where able. There doesn't appear to be enough demand from anyone to get BitPay to do this, though. No reason this can't change if people want it, though: there is nothing in Bitcoin preventing it.

1] Go to airport, stand in crowds shouting about all the explosives "I'm" carrying. Loot long-time-lost bags in Lost&Found while building's evacuated. Leave note saying I'm still in the building. Worldwide terror as security footage shows ghost taking bags and writing notes.
2] Raid liquor store for Irish whiskey. Give them bags from Lost&Found.
3] Go home, Irish coffee.
4] Pee outside.
5] Watch the news.
6] Irish coffee.
7] Irish coffee.
8] Pee outside.
9] Pee outside.
10] Irish coffee.
11] Irish coffee.
12] Pass out.
13] Pee self.
14] Wake up. "Gessum nawr inversibleh enermuh."
15] Irish coffee.
16] Pass out.