My friend Victoria is a photographer. I’m interested in photography too, and like to help her when I can. I noticed that she was researching styles of photography for autumnal, rustic, foods. One example in particular caught my eye. It caught my eye because it’s the sort of photography I like: a staged scene, that’s… Read More »
I am generally all for not legislating anything, but the world really does need to use a commonly agreed system for physical measurements. That system is, like it or not, metric. Or rather SI units. I am sure I am not alone in thinking that some mistakes were made in the SI unit system —… Read More »
I’ve touched on the idea before, but I thought it was time I made it explicit. I want to compare customer-not-present purchases using bitcoins and using credit cards. In particular: security. Consider a modern web site, accepting a credit card. You fill up your basket and press “buyâ€. You have to supply: Name Address Email… Read More »
There’s a country where everybody wants to have a son. Therefore each couple keeps having children until they have a boy; then they stop. What fraction of the population is female? (You may assume the question is asked as an expectation of course, since any particular country can be anything in principle — 100% girls… Read More »
This is part V in my “Bitcoin Explained†series. At the end of part IV we saw how a signature chain can be used to create an unstealable ownership record; but that a dishonest person in the chain can easily create multiple copies of a valid signature chain. 17283726152 17283726152 I will pay the owner…… Read More »
This is part IV in my “Bitcoin Explained†series. At the end of part III we saw that the Bitcoin network’s primary function is to act as a peer to peer timestamping system. That the blocks could, in principle, verify any data its operators wished. The catch of course is that those operators need an… Read More »
This is part II in my “Bitcoin Explained†series. The problem we left at the end of part I was that the construction of a valid chain of payload-storing blocks is trivial (for a computer) to create. For a financial system we want it to not be trivial, we want it to be incredibly hard… Read More »
Another in my tracking of bitcoin acceptance increases articles. This is a product unassociated with bitcoin; and yet look down there at the bottom of the page. We now take BITCOIN! Small steps. Small steps.
WHMCS, a client management company has been hacked. 1.7GB of data was stolen. The data leak comprises 500,000 usernames, passwords, IP addresses and in some instances credit card details. As I keep saying: the only financial information that would be stored in the company database when you pay via bitcoin is a magic number that… Read More »
At the Future of Money and Technology conference yesterday, the VP of American Express got an uncomfortable question (for him). His response caused amusement and tweetnoise. For the benefit of the search enginges.. Richard Nevins Q: What does Amex think about bitcoin? A: Next question. [cue laughter] Christian Lanng Q: What do American Express think… Read More »